


Not So Much Witness Protection As The Supernatural Babysitters' Club

by adulter_clavis, Sleepmarshes



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Language, M/M, Organized Crime, drug mention, occult activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13294134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adulter_clavis/pseuds/adulter_clavis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sleepmarshes/pseuds/Sleepmarshes
Summary: Soul had always dreamed of working undercover on a high-profile investigation that ended in massive promotions and a ride in a chopper, but he really hadn’t expected to get there by waking up alone and hung over without his badge or his shoes in a Jeep being towed cross-country. The fact that there was a high-profile crime lord heir calling him ‘bro’ and claiming that demonic werewolves killed his family didn’t help. The deadpan federal agent who informed him via walkie-talkie that he was now part of a top secret witness protection gig that involved being part of a fake polyamorous gay threesome didn’t, either.This was so beyond his pay grade.





	1. Fox Mulder is ahead of the curve

**Author's Note:**

> For the soul eater resonance big bang (Resbang) 2017. Our artists are [Adorabbey](https://adorabbey.tumblr.com/) and [Rogha](http://rogha.tumblr.com/), and you can find their works here:

There was a bump, a thud, and Soul's head caromed off of something very unforgiving and also very unfamiliar that lit up every nerve in his body with pure unadulterated agony -- his first clue, here in the hungover present, that he had done something excessively stupid in the presumably drunken past. Second clue: the pain in his head and the abrupt impact made his stomach spasm, which made him try to curl in on himself, which made him fall off of whatever godforsaken awful piece of furniture he'd been sleeping on, and so within a period of ten seconds he went from blissfully asleep to dry-heaving on the grubby carpet floor of -- wait, was he in a _car?_

For an indeterminate period Soul stayed put despite this very off-putting development, mostly because he could _feel_ his guts twisting round as they tried to decide just _how_ pissed they were at the abuse he'd put them through -- god he wished he could _remember_ what the fuck he'd been doing but -- but eventually everything settled and he peeled his cheek off the rough carpet so he could crack one bleary eye upwards.

Well. He certainly was alone in a moving car, which meant it was being towed, which meant that getting the hell out of it wasn't going to be easy or possible in the immediate future. To make things even more fun, he seemed to have been divested of all of his weapons -- actually, he seemed to have been divested of everything except his clothes, and he didn't even have all of _those:_ he had his undershirt, pants, and, wow, not even his shoes, _fuck_ , someone had his _badge_. Soul hauled himself upright and back onto the couch-style middle seat of what he now realized was a Jeep Cherokee -- from the mid 90's if one were to judge by the interior -- dragged his hands over his face and through his hair, and sighed. His hand hurt, actually, now that he thought about it; he glanced at his left hand, realized he had bandages there -- surprisingly competent-looking bandages -- and just decided not to even try and figure that out, let alone worry about it, at least not right now.

Soul never thought he'd see the day, but he'd so much rather be at the precinct on this, his supposed day off, drinking horrible scorched coffee that could double as diesel fuel and competing with his coworkers to see who could close the most cases in a month. At least then he wouldn't have to be in a mysterious moving vehicle with a raging hangover and no memory of how he got there, let alone any means of contact with the outside world. It wasn't even one of the Jeeps with a radio that would let him yell at a trucker for help -- the lame kind of Jeep, in short -- and after flopping into the back with a groan Soul ascertained that it was also creepy levels of clean and did not contain anything to write with, either, so there went his other idea of trying to signal other drivers. The spare tire was gone, the jack was gone, the tire iron was gone, there was _nothing_. The landscape outside wasn't any help, either; it was just generic rolling hills, scrub, nondescript trees: could be _anywhere_. A highway sign for 'Moundsville' flashed by, and Soul leaned against the side of the Jeep and wished for death.

More than death, though, he wished he had his gun. Or his partner. Or -- _anything_. He oozed back into the middle seat and allowed himself a minute to cradle his splitting head and heaving stomach and generally be pathetic; let himself consider for perhaps twenty full seconds the fact that he could just go the fuck back to sleep and maybe he'd wake up at his desk, facedown in a pile of grisly murder scene photos, and all this would just be some kind of weird-ass dream. It wouldn't even be the first time.

Soul lifted his head from his hands, double-checked that yes, he was still stuck in a serial-killer-level clean, mystery Jeep being towed by a giant moving truck, yes, he still didn't even have his shoes, and yes, this particular situation was apparently _not_ an elaborate hallucination, much as he would have preferred that timeline. He gathered his fortitude, reminded his stomach that they had shit they had to do before it could have the tantrum it was clearly working up to and anyway, this had nothing on Anya's girls' night drinks, and got up one more time so he could drag himself into the -- huh.

Well, he _was_ going to get into the driver's seat, but it seemed that today Soul was going to have to ride shotgun to a couple of walkie talkies. Also, unsurprisingly: nothing _at all_ in the glove box, not even a pop-tart. Annoyed, aching, and entirely done with the course his morning was taking, Soul grabbed one of the walkie talkies and gave it a quick once-over: it wasn't any slouch, seemingly a similar implementation to the ones he was used to from work. Maybe, if his luck decided to come out of hibernation, he could fiddle with the settings enough to --

"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK," it screeched from his hand, and Soul damn near threw it through the windshield in surprise, at first because he hadn't been expecting it to _scream_ at him, and then when he realized that the voice coming out of it sounded weirdly familiar and that was really not okay on a visceral level. "Where the fuck're we _going_ , _Agent Kid?_ I've been crammed in the back of this fuckwagon truck for goddamn _ever_ already, I have a right to know. I'm _cooperating_. Throw me a bone."

Soul twitched, muttered, "Name of your sex tape," but thankfully managed not to hit the button that would have transmitted his knee-jerk comment.

"You'll find out where we're going when we get there," said a very different voice a moment later -- a very _tired_ voice, a very monotone, done-with-this-bullshit-about-ten-thousand-years-ago voice, a voice that suggested its owner had had more years of education than his charge had existed on this earth. "Just because you're _cooperating_ doesn't mean I trust you, and I'm not about to perform a cavity search with my own two hands just to make sure you won't pass on any information I give you. Sit the fuck back and wait. Lord knows you have enough things to keep you entertained back there."

There was a split second where Soul was deeply disappointed by this reply, because he, too, _really_ wanted to know where the hell they were going, and then --

"Dude, look. My entire family was slaughtered by hellbeasts, I need to fucking know if we're moving into their territory, I just -- how the fuck can you work for the government and not realize that they're working with the fucking witches to weaponize the supernatural? Do you have enough imagination to realize just how much trouble we're in if they have _werewolves_ on their side? Can you comprehend it? They'll have total control, they'll _own_ us, it'll be a dictatorship from which no one can escape and soon they'll be able to control the weather and -- "

" _Shut. Up._ " The line clicked off for a moment and Soul could just imagine whoever it was, could _see_ the tired sigh, the worn-thin patience, the astronomical level of _done_. "Spouting weird supernatural conspiracy theories is not going to make me convince them that you deserve special treatment because you've clearly lost your grip on reality. I admit you've been admirably _consistent_ with this utter nonsense, but give it up already. At least like -- go for Mulder-level plausibility, okay?"

"Fox Mulder is _ahead of the curve_ ," the first voice snapped back, and Soul just -- carefully set the walkie talkie back down because he was a bit scared he would give himself away somehow just by holding it.

"Allow me to _fucking inform you_ , for the _thousandth time_ ," the accursed thing continued from the driver's seat, "they have infiltrated the _highest levels of government_ , they have _infiltrated_ the _cartels_ , they're in _everything_ and -- "

"Suggest you mute him," said the other walkie talkie in the -- agent's? voice, and Soul complied out of a helpless inability to come up with any other options that didn't involve breaking a window and throwing himself out of a moving car at highway speeds. "Do it before he starts in on the moon landing, trust me."

Resigned, Soul picked up the other radio. "I don't have the capacity for foreplay right now," he said, voice a gross rasp that sounded nearly as bad as he felt. "Tell me what the fuck is going on and why you seem to be kidnapping a police officer and transporting a conspiracy theorist." Beat. "Please."

"Proud of you for using your words, Detective Evans," said the voice, and now it sounded deeply amused, or as much as it could be underneath the ever-present harried veneer. "Welcome back to the world of the living. You can call me Kid. As you may have surmised, you had a bit of a rough night last night. I'm happy to tell you that none of that is my fault. As a matter of fact, I dissuaded the good doctor from dosing you with ketamine out of _respect_ , and also because you'd already let Black Star get so much alcohol into you that I reckoned its effects would be about the same, given time."

"I'm not certain you were wrong," Soul says, managing to gloss over the casual barbarism implied in the fact that a man -- a _doctor_ , that was a laugh -- had wanted to dose him with _ketamine_ while he was already intoxicated. Except that thought, of a doctor, of ketamine, of business that was definitely sketchy if not actually illicit and illegal, tweaked something in the alcohol-soaked blackness that had replaced his memories of the night before.

"Wait," he said a few seconds later, watching a 'welcome to Ohio' sign flash past and feeling his spirit shrivel up a little more, "did I not dream up the weird doctor in the Hawaiian shirt and flip flops who -- wait, never mind, there's no way he was real."

There was _no_ way he had actually been in the presence of a man whose outsized round glasses had gleamed with the same hint of madness, who had been named --

"Oh, so you _do_ remember dear Doctor Stein," said Kid, and Soul wanted to murder something for the smirk he could hear in the man's voice. "And here I was hoping it was all a total blank so I could just rent you a car and send you home at the next major city."

"We'll come back to that," Soul responded, because they _were_ going to come back to that, by god. "Are you telling me I _did not dream up_ a man named _Frank Stein_ who, in addition to whatever other shady shit you had him doing, was responsible for producing a passable corpse body double for -- Black Star, right?"

"No, Doctor Stein is very, very real," said his -- captor? "Unfortunately. It's not my preference to work with him -- I'd much rather be putting him in cuffs, except I can't catch him at anything that'll stick -- but he was the only one with the skills we needed who was willing to have anything to do with Star."

Soul contemplated the walkie talkie. Contemplated life. Contemplated, with a horrible feeling that meshed very poorly with his full-body hangover, what the implications were of no one wanting to work with a man named Black Star.

"So, Black Star," Soul began, wishing he didn't even have to _begin_ the sentence, much less finish it.

"Yeah," said Kid, because it turned out that whoever this guy was, he wasn't completely thick. " _That_ Black Star."

Soul took a very deep breath despite the fact that his entire body protested the movement. He closed his eyes, counted down from ten; tried to convince his heart to maybe stop trying to hammer free of its ribcage prison, and finally looked back out the windshield of the Jeep and pressed the button on his handset.

"Why," he said, because what else _was_ there to say.

There was another pause, though not the same kind as Soul had caused. The one coming from the other end of the radio was more thoughtful, a stretch of seconds lengthening into a minute or two before the Kid chose to speak.

"I'd have really liked to not involve you in this, detective," he said, and Soul gave the walkie talkie the same tired stare he'd have given the man himself if he could. "But, to refresh your memory: last night you met Black Star in a bar. He was out getting inebriated because we were about to fake his death and take him into witness protection, as he is the only surviving member of the most powerful organized crime family in the city and has not only provided us with quite a bit of critical information but also swears up and down that, contrary to what the current evidence points to, he did _not_ murder his family."

"The file we have on him back at the precinct can be used for bench presses," Soul said into the brief pause, remembering in vivid color some of the things this man has supposedly been involved in.

Remembering, also, in weird incoherent flashes, that they'd really gotten on well at the bar, especially once he'd managed to get Anya hooked up with that guy she'd been after for weeks now.

"And I bet you've seen no sign of him for _weeks_ , right?"

"Since before the murders, yeah," Soul admitted, and did not add that he'd found that a bit strange.

"That's because he turned himself in," Kid said, and Soul queued up his radio long enough to make a very rude noise. "No, really. He came in raving that something terrible was about to happen, yelling about evil spirits or somesuch, and offered us whatever information he had if we'd take him into protective custody. Of course we didn't _believe_ him, but his information checked out in the end, so we kept up our end of the deal."

"I presume there is an ongoing investigation on that front," Soul said, inanely, because _of course there was_ , he knew that already.

"Officer," said his host, "I think you need some electrolytes and a great deal of water so your brain can resume normal function."

Soul gave the walkie talkie a truly baleful glare. "Nothing you've told me has explained why I'm here," he said, desperately tired of the effort it took to talk.

"Black Star let his little secret slip at the bar," Kid said. "And he brought you to a place that I had _intended_ to remain classified, you know, given the extremely sensitive and bizarre nature of this entire affair. I wasn't going to assume that the alcohol would ensure you forgot the things I needed for you to not know, and I _certainly_ was not about to leave you with the doctor. Who knows what kind of mind control serum he'd have given you in the name of making sure you didn't remember anything troublesome."

"So you kidnapped me?" This was the _worst._ This was _stupid_. No one was ever going to let him live it down. It didn't help that Kid had kidnapped him ostensibly to put him in a better situation than _not_ kidnapping him would have.

"I did nothing of the sort," Kid said with a bit of a sniff. "I made the appropriate calls. I even managed to leave out most of the incriminating details, for which you are _welcome._ Congratulations, you are now officially part of this endeavor. No one thinks you're dead or kidnapped because you are neither of those things."

"So I'm now the handler to one of the most prominent mobsters in the country because he turned himself in, claims his family was murdered by -- the entirety of the supernatural bestiary, I guess? -- and gave you some information that checks out before managing to get me drunk and blow his cover?"

"You're rather sharp, Detective Evans," Kid said, that smirk back in his voice. "And just you wait until I explain what the cover story is, you're going to _love_ it."

Soul had just managed to queue up the walkie talkie, his eyes on the ceiling, his spirit _leaving his body_ , to say, "Oh, god," when an ungodly racket from in front of him demanded his immediate attention.

It was through the blinding pain of having moved one's head much too fast for the hangover he was sporting that Soul took in the full glory of Black Star -- one of the most wanted and certainly most notoriously difficult to catch mobsters in the country if not the world -- clad _only_ in a violently hot pink robe that barely hit his uncomfortably muscular thighs, hair dyed electric blue, grin nearly as gleaming and reflective as the silver aviators he had on.

"Fuck," said the walkie talkie.

" _BRO,_ " Black Star howled, arms flung wide, and Soul was helpless to the observation that the man's left hand was also bandaged. "Come into the _party van!_ I have food and darkness and blue Powerade, everything you need for your recovery so we can hit the bars back for last night!"

" _Fucking damn it, Star, we are going eighty on the highway and you're going to blow your cover,_ " Kid snapped over the radio.

"The newest member of my family had better _hurry his ass up and jump ship then, hadn't he,_ " Star yelled, eyes never leaving Soul.

Soul very gently set his splitting head in his hands and seriously contemplated the fact that he might have legitimately lost any vestige of a functioning grip on reality.

/

Kid took a deep breath, tightened his grip on the moving truck's steering wheel, and reminded himself yet again that he had, in a completely literal sense, signed up for this. He had walked into headquarters, sat down in that meeting, gone over the files on one Black Star and everything they knew about the impressively gory murders of his entire extended crime family, and raised his hand when they called for a volunteer.

Ah, to be young and naive again. Had it only been a few weeks?

Well. He'd taken the assignment, and that was that -- he'd see it through and by god he would _not_ strangle Black Star, at least not before his trial. If he could just pull this off, there'd be no way for anyone to keep him from getting a well-deserved promotion, not even his supercilious brother.

"Seriously, they were trying to summon some sort of demon werewolf thing," said the walkie talkie he'd left with Black Star in the back of the truck, and Kid had to devote a moment's concentration to convincing himself not to just run the damn truck off a cliff. It'd been _twelve hours_ of this so far, and the man showed no signs of shutting up, not even to sleep. "If I weren't such a badass I'd be dead right now and you'd have an even colder case than you already do, since none of you believe me when I tell you the fuckin _truth_."

The thing Kid hated most was that the man had been so consistent with this story. They'd had him in custody for weeks and every time Black Star gave testimony it was always the same.

Liars rarely managed that. It was enough to make Kid set something on fire, because if the story didn't hinge on things that _literally did not exist_ it'd be almost credible, except for the part where it involved witches and werewolves and every weirdass government conspiracy theory Kid had ever heard and several he hadn't. So here he was, taking a high-ranking member of a crime family into protective custody with his own two hands, driving a moving truck cross country so he could babysit a man who was most accurately described as _terminally insane_ by pretending to be his _life partner_ in a town that was some kind of literal gay oasis -- and to make it even more fun, Black Star had managed to drag a liability into the operation before it had even _started_.

Kid rolled his shoulders, uncomfortable. At least he'd been able to keep Stein from doing anything horrible. The detective seemed -- reasonable, he supposed. Willing to play along, though he didn't have much choice given that his commanding officers had all agreed that sending him along was for the best.

"So why are we heading to this particular town," said the detective, voice a hung-over sigh that sounded like he'd been gargling gravel. "Why, man. Who chose this."

"Not me, I can tell you that," Kid said once he'd grabbed the other walkie talkie, the one that connected him to his other passenger. At least the inter-agency cooperation would look good on his resume and for everyone involved once they were all lined up for the triumphant photo op. "It's far away, it's a town no one would expect to find him in, and it's a _living situation_ that no one, _ever_ , would expect him to be in, much less one which his guardians would be willing to mimic as well." He paused, looked for the words he wanted. "Especially now that there are two of us."

A grumbling, bassy sigh. "Yeah, give you that," Soul said, and he just sounded exhausted instead of -- well, any of the things Kid had been worried about. "Can't say I'd expect to find me in a polyamorous gay relationship, myself, much less in some kinda rich hipster oasis town in Death Valley."

"Could be a lot worse," Kid said, trying to help the poor man find some optimism in the depths of his long-suffering heart. Even he could admit that this was a bit of a shitty situation to wake up in when all you'd wanted to do the night before was have a few drinks at the bar on your night off.

"Trust me," Soul said, "I have been on some stakeouts you wouldn't _believe_. I know it could be a _hell_ of a lot worse than having to pretend like I'm into kinky gay threesomes in a million dollar house."

"That's the spirit," Kid said, and seriously contemplated just running over the lifted truck that had just cut him off. "Look, I'm going to stop soon. I'm sorry to keep you back there without any food or anything for so long, but I've got to try and find places to pull over where there are as few people as possible on account of Black Star. I'll get you back your things and give you the case file, okay?"

Soul grunted something that Kid took as assent and lapsed back into silence just in time for Black Star to resume explaining at length the entire web of conspiracies he'd invented to explain what had happened to his family.

God, Kid wished that this awful truck didn't have a built-in speed limiter.

/

In the middle of what looked to be an entire universe of corn fields, they stopped at a gas station that could have been built a century ago which had a sign above its doors proclaiming 'YOU ARE NOWHERE' in giant neon-lit letters.

"This taquito sure _tastes_ like nowhere," Soul muttered, leaning against the side of the Jeep and chewing on something that claimed to be food with the kind of determined resignation Kid was more used to seeing in convicted criminals. "Can I have my shoes back?"

"Sure," Kid said, because the man really did seem cooperative -- or as cooperative as one could be given his general miserable state -- and they were going to be working together on a rather sensitive and difficult assignment for a while. He deserved his shoes and a whole lot more, given his relative bad fortune. "You wanna ride up front with me?"

"I mean," Soul began, eyes slanting his way, and Kid just could not get over the man's apparent natural coloring -- dark skin, shock-pale hair, red eyes, really? He was the _worst_ undercover partner.

Whatever he'd been about to add to that statement was interrupted by what sounded like an elephant slamming into the moving truck's back door, a deafening crash that sent Kid and Soul both stumbling away from the vehicles and had Soul grasping for a gun he didn't have.

"Our boyfriend wants out," Kid said after a moment, dry as the desert they were heading towards, and Soul made the kind of noise Kid had thought native only to annoyed badgers until that moment. "He's probably still mad that you didn't want to jump from the Jeep to the truck with a hangover while barreling down the highway."

"He isn't the only one who wants out," Soul grumbled, and pushed away from the Jeep so he could give the moving truck a dubious look. "It okay if I open this?"

"Technically correct," Kid said, allowing himself a frown as he watched Soul unlock the hatch. "Though I wouldn't exactly be against _not_ letting him out, oh, maybe _ever._ I'm certain we could get food in there without giving him the opportunity to escape."

That got him a laugh, the detective's hands pausing for a few seconds on the latch, and Kid was surprised to see that when Soul Evans stopped looking like he lowkey wanted to embrace the void he was actually rather handsome. Perhaps they stood a chance of convincing the neighbors after all, assuming he could convince both of his fake boyfriends to practice some proper hygiene.

Then Soul got the hatch opened up and Black Star fucking _rocketed_ out of the truck, leapt clear onto the Jeep's roof so he could survey his new kingdom without even bothering to glance around to make sure that they were safe or at the very least had no potential witnesses.

"Well this sure's shit doesn't look like where we're supposed to be," he said, and crouched so he could slide down the side of the Jeep and give Soul a surprisingly sympathetic look. "You hanging in there, bro?"

"I've had worse," Soul said once he'd given Black Star a look of mild confusion, eyes crinkling a bit with his grimace.

"Here," Star said, and fished something out of the breast pocket of his glaringly neon robe that turned out to be yet another pair of silver-mirrored aviators.

"Oh god, thank you so much," Soul said with more feeling than Kid had yet heard from him, and then suddenly he was faced with both of them wearing identical pairs of horrible sunglasses, Star grinning and Soul smirking just a bit, like he just couldn't help it somehow.

"All right, look, keep it down," Kid said, and refused to find the two of them _charming_. "I know that the odds of you being recognized out here are slim to none but we cannot afford to take chances, as you presumably _know_ , given the constant education on conspiracies I've been receiving."

"Wherever we are, I'm not getting a 'demonic werewolf territory' vibe from it, so I think we're good," Black Star said, leaning against the Jeep again. "But fair enough, fair enough. I think you've finally learned enough to keep from slipping up and getting us all abducted, so I can let that go for now. But hey, since we're all here, I think it's time we addressed the real problem: what the fuck’re we gonna tell our new neighbors in Gaysville, USA about how we met? They're gonna wanna know, you know."

"The file -- "

"Fuck the file, that story is fucking awful," Black Star said, and Kid felt something important in the vicinity of his soul give up the fight. "Friends of friends and coworkers and bad romcom bullshit, no one will believe that. Have you _met_ me? Have you met this weirdo of a detective? No fuckin way, man. Try again."

"I'm not trying to argue," Soul said, "but what _would_ be a realistic origin story for a permanent gay threesome?" There was a split second's pause, just long enough for Kid to _see_ all of Soul's frazzled synapses fire in unison, and his face lit up. "What if _you_ were a vigilante on a mission of justice for your murdered wife and _I_ was the gas station attendant that helped you set the trap for the murderers by _blowing up the gas station?_ "

" _Perfect_ ," Star almost-yelled, and then looked Kid's way. "And Kid can be the -- the hitman I hired to finish the job in case they got me ahead of time -- "

"I have no desire to reenact a gay romance version of _The Marine_ , so I'm going to go get a fucking sandwich," Kid said, because even being in the _vicinity_ of this kind of absolute nonsense was making his brain try to self-destruct. " _At least_ pick a better movie to rip off."

"Don't forget our deal," Black Star yelled after him, and Kid had never wished so fervently that the earth would swallow him whole, had never _expected_ that one day he would be obligated by duty and his oath as an officer of the law to buy unreasonable amounts of Mountain Dew Pitch Black Label: Code Cherry Red Revolution Supernova just to keep his cover intact.

He had taken a solemn oath, he reminded himself; squared his shoulders, assured himself that just handling the stuff wouldn't irradiate him if he was quick, and headed inside.


	2. like a permanent mini Bacchanalia

They drove _forever,_ and Soul didn't even really care. Kid didn't sleep, didn't stop, didn't let him drive. After a while he managed to read through the entire encyclopedia-sized file Kid had supplied him with as a means of learning both about the case he now found himself attached to and the backstories they were supposedly using, and found himself grimacing at it over the biggest coffee he could get to go from El Cheapo, which had to be his new least favorite gas station name of all time.

"You know, Black Star has a point," he said, unable to, in good conscience, let such a bland story pass. "This is a pretty awful story considering the people involved."

"Wasn't my idea," Kid said without even looking at Soul. "Doesn't matter. We need to stick to the parameters we've been given. The people who set all this up have a _lot_ more experience with this kind of thing than we do, _Officer_. Every so often you have to bow to the expertise of others."

"Dude," Soul said, stung that he'd apparently been demoted to _officer,_ perhaps a bit _hurt_ because he'd thought they were on the same side here, "give me a break. Is kissing that much ass getting you promotions at the home office? I'm just trying to tell you -- no one is going to believe anything this tame about a dude like Black Star. Probably no one is going to believe _anything_ tame about a fucking gay threesome all shacked up together like a permanent mini Bacchanalia on their nice wholesome street. This is the kind of thing I do for a living, too, you know."

Kid gave him a look like he wanted to leave him for dead on the side of the highway.

"Yeah, I got it," Soul said, sighing and reaching for the little hatch that connected the rear of the truck to the cabin. "We have our orders, resistance is futile, et cetera. I'm gonna go catch a nap in the back. Let me know if you want me to drive so you don't have to resort to trucker meth to stay awake, all right?"

The back of the truck was -- something. Black Star had crammed in basically every weirdass thing he owned, including a couch done tastefully in shag white tiger stripe, about fifty black lights, all of which seemed to be lit somehow, and --

"What the fuck, is that a _microwave,_ you can't run those in the back of a truck," Soul said, not even asking, just rooted to the spot where he'd dropped onto a stack of boxes in utter disbelief. "How the _hell_."

Black Star explained. Then he explained that it wasn't that the moon landing had been faked, it was that the _moon_ was fake, just conspiracies built on conspiracies, that the witches had created the moon to enslave were-people of all stripes and the government had unimaginatively followed after. And then Soul brought up the backstories, and Black Star lit up like the _super illegal_ kind of fireworks, and by the time the truck came to a stop in front of what was to be their new house Soul and Black Star had realized they had the same taste in basically everything, agreed that Kid had a phenomenally huge stick up his ass, and had decided that they were probably destined to be best friends for life.

"You know you can't be friends with the criminal, right," Kid remarked immediately upon opening up the back of the truck and finding them with arms slung round each other's shoulders, laughing in the dark.

"Fuck," Soul said, realizing suddenly just what the hell he was doing, and put some distance between himself and Black Star, feeling a bit like like a guilty teenager caught making out by his parents.

"It is way too early in this assignment for me to have to worry about whether or not you're compromised," Kid said, and then his attention turned to something outside the truck.

"Hey now, he isn't compromised just because he and I have amazing taste and both think you need to get laid," Star said, catapulting himself off the couch and into the heat of Death Valley's most rainbow-tinted oasis.

"Get in the goddamn house," Kid hissed, eyes flashing murder so searingly pure that Black Star actually scuttled into the garage without any backtalk, and Soul had a moment in which he realized that there really might have been good reason for this particular agent, whoever he was working for, to have been given this case.

"Not you," he added when Soul stood up and kind of shuffled towards the sunlight.

Soul made a face at him that he hoped the mirrored aviators he was still wearing didn't ruin. "I _know_ ," he said, and climbed out of the truck with considerably more decorum than Star. "Somebody has to carry all this nonsense, and I _know_ you wouldn't trust it to movers. There _were_ movers, though, right? We have furniture?"

Kid gave him a flat look, his odd, pale eyes gleaming a bit in what Soul thought was really unnecessarily bright sunlight. "It'd serve Star right to have to sleep on the floor with no television or video games, but yes, we have all the things we're going to need to play at being responsible adults in a relationship."

"Cool," Soul said and mopped sweat from his forehead. "Let's get going, then, before I pass clear the fuck out in this godforsaken heat. _Why_ did we end up in the hottest place ever, again?"

"Because this is where we were sent," Kid said, somehow still immaculate in his black suit, and grabbed the nearest box out of the truck. "Now let's not waste time. The neighbors are going to get curious, and I want all of this gone before someone wanders over with a Jello mold and sees something they shouldn't."

Soul accepted the box and glanced back at the contents of the truck. "Well, no one should have to witness the atrocity that is that couch, admittedly," he said, and waited for Kid to grab his own box. "And, uh," he added, following him through the garage, "this isn't the kind of mission where we have to disappear witnesses or anything, is it?"

"For an actual police officer, you sure do have some weird, cop-movie-inspired ideas about undercover work of this nature," Kid said, leading him into an annoyingly white house -- white carpet, white walls, white cabinets and counters in the kitchen offset only by gleaming stainless appliances. "Why would you ever think that we'd be killing civilians?"

"Gotta admit though, it'd be a hell of a lot simpler for you assholes if you _could_ just disappear witnesses," Black Star said from where he was already splayed across the formerly-immaculate leather couch. "Snitches get stitches, and all that. Secrets are easy to keep when only you and some slob who got two shots to the back of the head know them. I can take care of the neighbors if you _really_ want."

"Does the concept of _inconspicuous_ even exist to you?" Kid said, sounding like he was chewing through steel, and Soul found himself in the bizarre situation of being grateful that nobody got a moving box dropped on their head.

Star just laughed, though, eyes not even leaving the huge flatscreen as he looked for something to watch. "Now, now," he said, and looked away just long enough to wink at them both. " _How_ many years had you guys been trying and failing to get your hands on the heir to the world's most ruthless ninja crime family?"

"Like that had anything to do with _you_ as opposed to your bodyguards and your father," Kid snapped, and, before Star could say anything else, dropped his box on the kitchen counter and strode back outside.

Soul sighed and set his box down with considerably more care. "Do you _have_ to," he said, wishing more with every minute that passed that he'd never decided to go out for that drink.

"He's a big boy, he'll make it," Star said from where he was now hanging upside-down off the couch. "Doesn't seem like the kind of dude who'll respect you unless you push back. Anyway, he doesn't believe me about the whole murder thing, so -- "

" _No one_ believes that werewolves summoned by witches slaughtered your family," Soul said.

"Yeah, okay, one day you're going to realize I'm not lying and by then I'm sure it'll be too late, like you'll have a werewolf about to chew your face off, but the only thing I _need_ you to believe is that I didn't kill them." Star pulled himself upright and gave Soul the first fully serious look he'd seen. "I might have hated all of them in the end, but they were my family and they raised me and you don't betray your blood."

"Look, I -- " Soul started, because he'd been doing this kind of work long enough that his gut was doing its best to tell him that Black Star wasn't actually lying about not murdering his family and he respected his gut, it had kept him alive on multiple occasions, but then the doorbell rang.

"Oh god, Kid is gonna stab us for not unloading the truck before the neighborhood welcoming committee shows up," Soul said, already beginning to resign himself to a painful death and, if he was lucky, being sent back home.

Except Black Star bolted off the couch and over to the front door, mirrored aviators firmly in place -- part of his disguise, Soul guessed, though probably also just a fashion statement for somebody like Black Star.

"Hi," said the hugely buff delivery guy on their front step, "I've got a delivery and setup order for a weight rack here. Are you able to accept the delivery right now?"

" _Yeah_ I am," Star said, back to grinning like a Cheshire cat on meth. "Sorry to break it to you, though, but it's going in the basement."

"No problem, we do a lot of basement installs," the guy said, and together they headed out to start hauling stuff.

"Um," Soul said, but Star was gone, leaving him alone in a kitchen that probably cost more per month than his apartment back home.

/

Soul figured out after about fifteen seconds of confused staring that what Black Star had done was going to be enough to send Kid straight through the roof, and he was not disappointed. The man just about pulled his gun over it, and even days later Soul still wasn't sure if Kid had decided against it because he knew better or just because he didn't want to risk the delivery guy freaking out when the inevitable shootout happened.

" _How did you know where we were going_ ," he hissed, having grabbed Black Star on his way back out the front door and more or less thrown him into the empty coat closet. " _Where did you get the MONEY for all this?!"_

"It's not my fault that you underestimated me," Star said, still mostly calm except for a glint in his eyes that usually told Soul that it was time to get ready to restrain somebody. "That's why none of you ever managed to _catch_ me, flyboy. Run around in public acting like a meathead, they assume you _are_ a meathead forever and act accordingly. Did you think I was just some dimwitted rich asshole?"

He put a hand on Kid's shoulder, twisted, and moved in a blur Soul couldn't follow so that Kid was suddenly the one being slammed into closets.

"You gave me a phone," Star said, voice incongruously patient, eyes a bit savage. "Like I can't figure out how to make it do what I want? Like I can't work a fucking walkie talkie to listen to other nearby signals?" He paused and let himself cackle for a second while Kid stared in shocked silence, which wasn't a reaction Soul had thought he possessed up until that moment. "You think you assholes seized _all_ my assets?" He leered, and Kid went white with what Soul assumed was pure murderous rage. "As if. Just remember, _agent_ : don't start none, won't _be_ none. Maybe consider keeping it professional."

And he just -- left, went back outside and back to dragging heavy objects into the house while Kid was occupied with containing something that Soul figured must have been akin to a nuclear meltdown inside his head.

Discretion being the better part of valor -- and not wanting to get dragged into helping move heavy shit _or_ listening to Kid plot Star's death -- Soul edged past him on the pretense of taking a walk to get a feel for the neighborhood, very carefully shutting the closet door as he went so that Kid could lose his mind in peace.

/

His past self, Kid decided after just a few days, had been an unforgivable idiot, and was very, _very_ dead to his present self.

He'd signed up for this. Legitimately. It was enough to make him tear his hair out and consider admitting defeat -- there was a first time for everything, right? Everyone got one chance to admit they were in over their head -- though that urge never lasted long, because whenever he had that thought he remembered the look Black Star gave him every time he voiced disbelief or frustration at some absolutely _insane_ thing the supposed crime lord ninja heir had done and incandescent stubborn rage kept him from picking up the phone. Well, that and the fact that he doubted they'd be able to send a replacement now that they were in place and the neighbors had seen him and -- he _really_ needed that promotion.

Marie would just laugh at him, anyway, that loud pitying now-you-fucked-up laugh that'd been haunting his dreams lately.

So he bit his tongue and spent a lot of time in his office and planned out the house's surveillance system. Ideally, Black Star wouldn't know about it, which Kid realized over the course of that first week was going to be a real challenge since the man was incredibly paranoid, very observant, and _never slept_. It didn't help that he was apparently not going to be able to tell the detective about it, either, since he and Black Star were now best friends despite Kid's best efforts to remind Evans that he wasn't supposed to befriend their charge.

He'd given up on even reminding him after they spent sixteen straight hours watching every _Fast and Furious_ movie and eating an amount of popcorn that Kid would previously have said was impossible for two humans to ingest without having to go to the hospital.

That said, the detective did have his uses: he'd gone out and walked the neighborhood, and it turned out that he was at least _competent_ , which considering the circumstances of his addition to the team was more than Kid could have really hoped for. After that first day he'd gone out and bought appropriate clothing -- clean, expensive, artfully distressed jeans and attendant shirts, mostly -- and put on a good front for the neighbors on his 'evening walks,' turned that cluelessly charming smile up to eleven and talked about nothing of consequence.

"Well, the ladies across the street are very sweet, and they gave us that elaborate strawberry Jello mold," he'd said one evening when their paths crossed in the kitchen and Black Star was too busy pumping iron in the basement to crash their conversation. "Kim and Jackie, pink hair and black hair respectively if you see them. Kim runs an Etsy shop and Jackie's a nurse, so they're up and about at all hours. The guy next door to them by the pool is the president of the HOA, name's Sid. Can't really get a bead on him so far other than he's _really_ concerned with how well we maintain our yard."

Kid looked away from where he'd been considering hiding a camera in the fridge's ice dispenser. "Ah yes, the HOA president. His -- partner? brought us that plant with the lurid flowers that Black Star likes so much."

"Her name's Nygus," Soul supplied, and he glanced down at his notepad. "Haven't seen whoever lives on Kim and Jackie's other side yet, the house on the corner next to us is vacant, and the guy we share a fence with on the other side is...a little intimidating." His brow furrowed. "I feel like he could probably disassemble me without much effort, and I can't say I'm used to that feeling. Seems like the world's most devoted father, though, and his little girl is adorable and maybe a little _too_ smart. Kinda lost interest in me once he found out we didn't have kids and weren't into the local PTA scene."

"Well, most of the people in this area are couples, and couples tend to have children," Kid said, and contemplated the microwave. Maybe something small inside the door? "It's part of why this area was chosen, it's all very wholesome. The man next to your PTA enthusiast has teenage twins, though they seem to be homeschooled and don't get out much."

"Figures you'd have struck up a friendship with tall, dark, and stoic," Soul said, and went to the fridge for a beer. "Have you seen whoever's in the house on the cul de sac? Place is _weird_."

"Agreed," Kid said, tapping his fingers on the counter and trying to decide if perhaps the light fixtures might be better. At least Black Star wouldn't be able to get his hands on them as easily as something at ground level. "Just the amount of money it must be taking to maintain that -- _forest_ \-- is astonishing."

Soul shrugged, cracked open his beer, and grimaced at it immediately upon taking a sip. "We have got to get some better beer than _Keystone Light_ , I don't care if one of our neighbors decided to leave this on the porch as a welcome to the neighborhood gift," he said, then sighed and returned to the subject at hand. "Anyway, you were busy but the lady who lives there has a groundskeeper who seems to have a proprietary interest in the landscaping of the entire neighborhood, _way_ more so than Sid. He came by and actually employed mafia-style intimidation tactics to get across the point that he wants to handle our yardwork so it can get done 'properly,' so I told him to feel free. You see a giant one-eyed dude edging our lawn, don't pay him any mind. Also, apparently there's a neighborhood barbeque soon that we are -- I'll say _strongly encouraged_ to attend, by which I mean I think they might hunt us down if we don't show."

"I'll do my best to ignore any unknown men doing yard work," Kid said, and for a moment stopped looking for good locations for his cameras because he'd been reminded of something more pressing. "Speaking of the neighbors behind us, just what the _hell_ have you and Black Star been doing upstairs with my binoculars?"

Soul had the good grace to look a bit abashed, shoulders rounding and eyes darting to some distant, less threatening corner.

"Look," he said after it became clear that Kid actually expected an answer, "it's _boring_ here, okay? Since you're apparently a sugar daddy for not one but _two_ people, Star and I have to make our own entertainment -- and I hope you _appreciate_ that I have done my best to steer him towards things that have a lower chance of blowing our cover than the things he _wants_ to do. I stopped him from buying some kind of _drone army_ , Kid, I don't want to hear you complain at me about this."

"What, _exactly_ , is 'this'?" Kid asked, already anticipating and dreading the answer so much that he employed _air quotes_.

A sound like a herd of rhinos stampeding up the stairs interrupted whatever excuse Soul was cooking up, and both he and Kid whirled to stare down the basement door -- Soul still not out of the habit of grabbing for a weapon he no longer had and Kid's hand edging towards one of his hidden knives, both of them operating on instinct because of the sheer _noise level_ of what they both logically _knew_ was just Black Star heading their way.

"The _neighbors_ ," Star screeched, bursting through the door with so much force that Kid was shocked that the damn thing stayed on its hinges. "Those two are _perfect_ for each other and they don't even _know_ it, of _course_ we want to fucking know what's going on over there, it's _heartbreaking_ and I can't believe you would even _suggest_ that we shouldn't be invested in the great romantic drama of our time -- "

" _Star,_ " Soul hissed, a scarlet flush creeping up his cheeks, and while Black Star did shut his mouth, nothing was _ever_ going to stop him from giving them both the kind of grin that made Kid want to check the house for incendiary devices.

Kid took a deep breath and reminded himself that so far neither Soul nor Black Star had done anything _overtly_ horrible. "Indoor voices," he said instead of any of the things he _wanted_ to say, beginning with _stalking is illegal_ and ending somewhere in the neighborhood of _isn't the fake gay soap opera_ inside this house _good enough for you?_

"But _daddy_ ," Star said, and nonchalantly pretended to stretch as a means of flexing, which was when Kid realized that the man wasn't even wearing a _shirt_. He hadn't really wanted visual confirmation of the elaborate sumi-e star tattoos that Black Star's file had mentioned as a distinguishing characteristic.

"I will send details of your location to the werewolf mafia," Kid snapped, and Black Star dropped the routine with gratifying alacrity, his muscles visibly deflating.

"Hey, it's not like we're super _obviously_ watching them with binoculars from the windows," he muttered, and it was truly strange to see a brawny hardened criminal _pouting_ but this was apparently Kid's life now.

"Yeah, we only do that when it's dark out," Soul added, and Kid _felt_ his blood pressure spike.

"Firstly, _what the fuck,_ " he spat, and Soul actually took a half step back. "Secondly, of all the things, why did you two pick _this_ for a recreational activity? Those are human beings over there with a _right to privacy,_ not characters from your soaps! Pick a new hobby -- pick something with some _culture_ , for _god's sake_ \-- or I swear you won't _live_ to see the end of this mission, _either_ of you, _especially_ if what you're implying by 'we only do that at night' is that you have _somehow_ gotten your hands on some surveillance equipment and literally have _cameras_ pointed at their windows!"

Star and Soul shared a look; Black Star shrugged; Soul turned back to Kid with his hands up in a gesture Kid suspected was meant to placate him somehow. "Okay, fair point, but shipping dynamics aside, those guys have some _weird shit_ going on and honestly I can't trust anyone who has the rusted-out ass end of a Lincoln towncar from last century in his backyard, especially since it seems to be full of questionable mystery items."

"Plus that other guy has to have about a hundred knives hidden around the house," Black Star added. "I mean, that's normal for _me_ , but that can't possibly be normal for a disgustingly happy neighborhood like this, you know?"

"You think the neighbors are out to get us," Kid summarized, and took a few steps to the side so he could slump against the fridge and put his head in his hands. "Is this about the government controlling the weather and having a secret werewolf army, or is it something else?"

"Oh man you don't even _know_ ," Black Star started, and oh god Soul was _nodding along_ , but then something emerged from the dark night of the backyard and _smacked_ into the glass of the back door, and they all turned to face it in varying stages of forming an attack plan, thoughts of privacy concerns, government conspiracies, and whether or not the neighbors were getting together momentarily forgotten.


	3. protect ya neck

Soul would have been relieved, honestly, if the thing that crashed into the back door had been a bird -- or really any animal -- even if that _would_ have meant that the magnetic field experiments had progressed much farther than even Black Star had anticipated. He'd even have been all right with, say, it being a rock courtesy of some neighborhood hoodlum trying to express his teenage angst by throwing stuff at houses in lieu of actually fighting the Man in the streets. Everybody had to start somewhere.

Instead, it was one of the neighbors he and Star had just been defending their surveillance of to Kid -- the bigger one, a brawny, ill-tempered guy who looked kinda like a trailer park and a street hockey rink had taken turns mugging him for his lunch money and whose face had a really impressive amount of metal in it. By the looks of it, he'd jumped the fence between their houses and managed to stumble on the place where the brick of their porch met the turf of the lawn on his way over, which left them with a very strange face-print on the door when he pulled away a few seconds later.

Soul did his best to make his still-instinctive grab for a gun he wasn't wearing look like your run-of-the-mill, startled flinch, and after a minute the guy scowled even more intensely than he had been, gave them the kind of exasperated look Soul might have expected to get from a disappointed parent, and rapped torn-up knuckles on the door.

They left a smear of blood on the glass, and Kid took an involuntary half-step forward -- which, as far as Soul was concerned, indicated very clearly that somebody needed to do something before real violence erupted.

So he took a breath and gathered his fortitude, tried to find some middle ground between normal reactions and cop reflexes, and went to open up the back door.

"Sup," the guy said, and Soul noted a little bit of blood at the corner of his mouth, bit of a bruise like he'd taken a good punch to the face, and figured he didn't need any other explanation for the way the guy was dripping surly annoyance.

Soul cleared his throat. "Ah, hey," he said -- play it cool, man -- "Do you need to get to a doctor? You okay?"

"What? Oh, ugh," the guy responded, and swiped one dirty, busted-knuckle hand across his mouth. "Nah, I'm alright. Hell, I'm messing this up. I'm Giriko. Your neighbor. Sorry I didn't make it over when the ‘hood all brought you cakes, but that isn't really my thing. Hope you liked the beer, that was me."

"Right, of course it was," Soul said slowly, which made Giriko shift a bit, uncomfortable. "I'm Soul. You live right behind us, right? What, ah -- what brings you to our back door, exactly?"

A noise from behind him made Soul twist around to look at Black Star and Kid -- somewhat against his better judgement, considering Giriko looked like the sort of guy who'd try to take him the fuck out as soon as his attention wavered -- and found Star making the kind of pseudo-constipated face he tended to wear on the rare occasions he tried to watch his mouth. Kid wasn't even looking at him, having already dropped his head to one hand so he could rub his temples. Soul let himself grimace at them for a second, then turned back to Giriko, who was gamely keeping a straight face.

"Sorry to barge in," he said, "really I am, but I, uh -- "

"I know that look," Black Star said in an almost-yell, having apparently gotten enough control of himself to speak. "You in the doghouse, bro?"

" _Star_ ," Kid said, face still pressed to his palm by the sound of his voice, but that sort of light admonition had never stopped Black Star that Soul knew of, and he'd read a novel-length file on the man.

"Give me a break, _honey_ , no need to kick the guy when he's down." Star said, and shouldered Soul out of the way so he could offer Giriko his hand to shake, heedless of what looked like blood and oil and -- gunpowder? -- stains on their guest's fingers. "Hey man, I'm Black Star, you can call me Star if you wanna, guy behind me who looks like he's about to lose his mind is Kid. How about we get you a beer and watch some Fast and Furious and you can tell us whatever's important to know about why you gotta crash here for a little while."

"Um," Giriko said, and it was weird seeing a man built like a six foot who-knew-how-much brick outhouse look so confused, but he did, and he let Black Star drag him over to their formerly pristine leather couch and settle him in with a beer while he ordered about ten pizzas. Soul trailed after once he'd gotten the door locked again, and let Black Star convince him to have a beer with them while Giriko explained whatever was going on. Kid neglected to join in, though he didn't leave; he just settled against a nearby wall, arms crossed, looking vaguely haunted about what having Giriko on the couch was doing to the upholstery and very obviously trying not to let that show because that would be _terribly_ rude.

"It's really not that a big deal," Giriko said once he'd had a beer and watched a few overblown drag races and devoured most of an anchovy and pepperoni pizza, and Black Star made tutting noises that came off as placating and disbelieving all at once. "Some pretty serious stuff's come up, and we're having trouble agreeing about what we need to do to deal with it, so we've been fighting."

"You and..." Kid trailed off, eyebrows high, querying.

"Justin," Giriko supplied, and took another huge bite of pizza. "We've been partners forever, but this sorta thing's never come up, you know? We aren't all that great at compromise, never had to be."

" _Tragic,_ " Black Star intoned, and Soul rolled his eyes.

"Is that where you got those bruises?" he asked, remembering too many people who'd come in insisting that their wounds were their own fault and yet -- they'd still _come in_.

Giriko blinked at him, the set of his mouth weirdly belligerent but still mostly just confused. "Some of them? That's not important, though -- I'm a big boy, I know what I'm okay with. I know how this works."

" _Oh,_ " Soul said, and couldn't help the heat that crept over his cheekbones to the tips of his ears. "Well, I mean, I didn't mean to imply -- "

"Whatever cranks your chain," Black Star cackled, swilling cheap beer and laughing so hard that Soul would have been concerned if he hadn't also been ready to straight up _murder_ the man.

Giriko looked _more_ confused, and Kid salvaged what little there was to save by saying, "As long as it was voluntary, we shan't bring it up again," and somehow everyone settled the fuck back down and Soul managed not to die of mortification while they finished up pizza, beer, and enough Fast and Furious to restore anyone's spirits to optimal levels.

Well, Soul and Black Star and Giriko did. Kid managed to sit through approximately three quarters of a movie before excusing himself with claims that he had work to do with the kind of cast to his expression that suggested he might commit murder if forced to ingest any more media content.

"Hey, what do you guys do here, anyway," Giriko said after another movie and a lot of beer, while Black Star was still wrestling with the ridiculous tire-shaped box set they had on the couch next to him. "Like, for work. Kinda late for Kid to be busy, ain't it?"

"We make our own hours," Soul said with a shrug and a swallow of beer, still striving for vague, noncommittal statements, but --

" _Important work_ ," Black Star said in an exaggerated stage whisper, the like of which was commonly heard at slumber parties. "Stuff we're _not supposed to talk about_ , yanno?"

Soul could feel his muscles tighten in spite of himself. He wished he had a weapon -- he didn't have protocol for what they were supposed to do if their cover somehow got blown and it was going to be really hard to restrain a guy Giriko's size, especially considering that he'd had some alcohol and they were both sitting and --

"Yeah, I know what that's like," Giriko grumbled, and Soul snapped out of his increasingly panicked thoughts with a confused blink. His blank stare got him a kind of self-conscious shrug from Giriko, shoulders rounding forward as he reached for his drink. "Me and Justin work a lot of odd jobs. Did security for that lady down the street once, _that_ was wild."

" _Really_ ," Black Star said, and sidled closer with a gleam in his eyes that made Soul want to run for the hills or at least go get Kid so they could work together to avoid whatever impending disaster was about to happen.

"Yeah, have y'all not met her yet? She goes by Medusa. Kinda got this -- " he made a face, a weird, pained grimace, then seemed to give up. "Kinda has this weird wine-mom-cougar thing going on, pretty sure she's perving on that pretty Japanese girl cross the street."

" _Fascinating,_ " Black Star said. "So why'd she need a security detail?"

Giriko shotgunned the rest of his beer and let Star hand him a fresh one from the pyramid he'd built on the coffee table. "You know how some ladies, they sell makeup, tupperware, that sorta stuff? And they have those crazy parties about it, right, they invite all their friends, and all the neighborhood wives, and they drum up business."

With an air of deep familiarity that made Soul want to skip finding Kid and just go find himself a cliff, Black Star said, "Pyramid schemes. Yeah, I know bout that stuff. You saying she needed _security_ to sell _tupperware?_ "

"I wish she sold tupperware," Giriko grumbled, and Soul was more than a little startled to see the man flush a little bit. "Nah, she sells sex toys. And wine."

"Now _that's_ a party," Star whooped, and Soul just kind of -- pressed his face into his palm, tried to pretend he was anywhere else. Thought longingly of home, his shitty apartment that was nonetheless _his_ and not being invaded by insane shirtless crime lord children talking about sex toy parties. "So she needed you guys to make sure nobody got crazy?"

"Pretty much," Giriko said with a heavy sigh. "That and, really, she wanted some eye candy to go along with the overpriced vibrators and her weird-ass snake wine, since her gardener wasn't about to flex for anybody's viewing pleasure."

Wait. "Snake wine?" Soul asked, head back up. "That shit's poisonous, man, it's _illegal_."

"Not -- not _actual snake wine_ , holy shit," Giriko said, turning to look at him with surprise writ all over his heavily-pierced face. "She has her own vineyard or some shit, dude. The wines are all snake-themed, is all. You really haven't met her yet? You will." Pause. "My only advice is: _protect ya neck_."

" _Amazing,_ " said Star, rapturous over someone quoting Wu Tang because why wouldn't he be, then levered himself to his feet. "Hey man, it's actually kinda late. You should probably get some rest so you can go back home in the morning and win over hearts and minds, yeah?"

Giriko made a growling noise that came across as annoyed agreement, and let Black Star lead him upstairs to the big bonus room over the garage, which was deemed the least-likely location to result in someone running across something they shouldn't, and as far from Kid's office as one could get.

Not that anyone could get into Kid's office without passing enough security checks for a vault full of government mind-control experiments, but that was, apparently, beside the point.

Soul was facedown on the couch wondering how his life had come to this for about the thousandth time since he woke up in the stupid Jeep when Black Star hammered back down the stairs and got _way_ too up in his space, leaning in close enough for Soul to know for sure he really should have freshened his deodorant after his workout so he could hiss, "That guy is _in on it_ , come _on_ , we need to go downstairs so we can talk about this without being overheard."

"In on _what_ ," Soul grumbled, but nevertheless he dragged himself off the couch and followed Black Star into the basement despite the fact that its contents made him want to claw out his eyes at this point. There was really no reason to combine that many kinds of animal print in that many forms, and there was even less reason for the black lights and lava lamps and the giant neon pop-tarts logo he'd gotten from god knew where. "And what do you _mean_ , overheard?"

Star threw himself onto the selfsame zebra striped shag couch he'd been sitting on in the moving van and gave him a look like perhaps Soul had been compromised by the lizard people after all. "Dude, if you don't think Kid has this whole place bugged you're living in a fairy tale," he said, popping open a can of Monster Xtreme: Code Critical Rad as he settled in. "It's so much damn work keeping up with his neurotic ass that I only bother keeping this place clean, more or less. And haven't you noticed that ice cream truck that keeps cruising through? That motherfucker is loaded to the _gills_ , and I don't even know why they're here. I don't think they work for Kid, anyway."

"What -- _ice cream truck?_ Dude, do you _know_ how many kids live in this neighborhood?" After all, there were conspiracy theories and then there was actual paranoid delusions, and -- _ice cream trucks?_

"That's the _point_ , bro," Star said, leaning forward, upsettingly earnest. "If you were gonna load up a vehicle with hella surveillance equipment and spy on everyone, would you choose something obvious or would you choose something everyone _expects_ to cruise the neighborhood on the regular? Come on dude, you're a cop, think this shit through."

Soul grimaced. "But it'd be weird if some ice cream truck showed up all the time and didn't sell any ice cream," he said, because he'd seen surveillance vans and that equipment was not inconsequential, you couldn't just cram ice cream in there and have it look convincing.

"Dude they sell ice cream, they're not _stupid._ If you think these government spooks don't have the tech to jack into everyone's computers and baby monitors and home security systems and also have room for an ice cream freezer for the kiddies, you're dreaming. Like they'd give the local police the good shit? They don't even _tell_ most people about what they can really do." Black Star just shook his head, very I-pity-the-fool, and Soul did his best not to be offended.

"Anyway, look," Star continued after a brief interlude in which he got up, went to his mini-fridge, and crammed several hot pockets into the microwave, "that's beside the point. I wanted to talk to you about our poor neighbor, who deserves some sympathy for being in the doghouse but who is also _definitely some kinda spy_."

"Um," Soul said, and decided that he'd better sit down. Given the available options and how luridly animal-print all available furniture was, he opted to sit on the weight bench with only the briefest hesitation.

"I told you that werewolves killed my family," Star said, and Soul wasn't about to disagree when a man talked about tragedy like that. "Werewolves summoned by a witch, and don't act like you guys weren't trying to track Arachne down."

"I didn't say that," Soul said carefully, and got back up, grimacing over how his pants stuck to the bench, and pulled the weight plates off Black Star's bar before they bent it just so he could have something to do.

"Well, maybe you didn't know it, but Arachne didn't work alone," Star said, sounding deeply resentful. "She's got a sister. The two of them were the ones that convinced my father that if he wanted to win it all, if he wanted a badass werewolf at his beck and call who could single handedly kill all his enemies, I was the only fit sacrifice."

_That_ got Soul's attention. "And why did you not mention your father trying to kill you before -- like, you know, when you were talking to the police _before_ we got sent all the way out here?"

Star snorted, can of energy drink sweating in his hand. "It's not exactly information that makes me look better," he said, and Soul couldn't really argue that. "I wasn't about to kill Dad, though, even after all that. Maybe I'm too loyal, maybe I'm just the heroic ideal of a man who lives and dies by his convictions. But my _point_ here is, Arachne has a sister, and that house at the end of the street makes my hair stand on end the same way she did, and the way Giriko talks about her? I bet you money -- and I still have a lot of it, no matter what Kid thinks -- that that's our lady. We gotta get that place scoped out ASAP, dude. Last fuckin thing I want is more witches summoning demonic assholes to fuck up my life, and if I'm right then that's _exactly_ what she's gonna be looking to do the instant she realizes I'm here. Some witness protection gig you guys got going here, didn't you do background checks on the neighbors?"

" _Dude_ ," Soul said, not even sure where to start, a 35lb plate heavy in his hands as he stopped to give Star a Look. "It's not like I was the one who picked this place. And what do you _mean_ , that house makes your hair stand on end, what -- "

" _Ninja_ ," Black Star said, and Soul couldn't help but give him that pained look again, the one that meant he really just wished he could be anywhere but where he was.

" _Fine_ , whatever, how the hell would you even _know_ if it's Arachne's sister? We don't know anything about the western side of that family operation other than that it exists in some form." Soul heaved a couple of 45s onto the weight rack and sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Not for lack of trying, though, I can tell you that. It's like the western branch doesn't actually _do_ anything."

"I'll know," Black Star said, as confident in this assessment as he was of the werewolves, as he was that the government was controlling the weather. "That occult shit they do has a smell to it, and you can't deny that the damn rainforest she has going on over there is sketchy as hell."

"The only sketchy thing about it is the amount of water she's chewing through to maintain it, which might _actually_ be illegal," Soul said, and tried to ignore the way the lighting was starting to eat into his retinas.

"So investigate _that_ , if you really need something that mundane to get you off your ass," Star said, gesturing a little wildly in a way that Soul interpreted as some combination of exasperation and seething impatience. "Apparently I'm not really supposed to go outside too much, so I'm _trusting_ you with this, bro, because the last thing I want is that damn agent up my ass because somebody looked at me for longer than five minutes. You'd think he'd be more worried about spy satellites, but _no,_ it's the _neighbors_ who are the threat somehow."

"I'm more surprised he isn't worried about everyone's smartphones, myself," Soul said, and let himself drift towards the stairs. He had to get away from the neon and the black lights and the purple tiger striped bean bag chair before he lost his damn mind. "Those things are the biggest security risk of all time, you _know_ the government's listening in, who knows who else might be, right?"

" _Damn_ right," Star responded, and shooed him away. "Go. Do what you do, _detective_. Good luck not tipping anyone off when you start creepily staring at Medusa's house for hours on end."

Soul scowled at him, just a little. "I'm not going to do _that_ ," he said. "I know how not to be obvious. I'm just gonna go for a walk."

"You do that, sweetcheeks," Black Star said, and Soul hightailed it up the stairs with Star's leer burned into his eyeballs.

/

Soul had to admit that wandering the neighborhood in the middle of the night wasn't really his smartest move, but at least at night it wasn't hot enough to straight up obliterate what was left of his brain, with the added bonus of every single one of their perfect neighbors wasn't outside looking to have an involved conversation about kids and life and how wonderful everything was. Personally, Soul wanted to have a conversation about what the actual fuck the architects involved in this neighborhood had been thinking, because every single house had a different style to it, somehow; nothing matched, nothing made sense, and it was all kind of _bad_. Like, not eyesore bad, but really awful if you knew anything about architecture and design, which unfortunately he _did_ as a result of some college choices made under the influence.

Not that he regretted them, except in that they let him feel this nascent horror at the fact that none of these houses could even manage to have windows that matched, and it was getting to be a little Lovecraftian --

He realized he'd paused in the middle of the road to contemplate the glued-on nature of the accents marring the house across the street only when he found himself abruptly caught in literal headlights as a car rounded the curve that made up the border of part of his front lawn. Soul scrambled the rest of the way across the street, adrenaline a little shocky in his veins, and was still trying to settle his nerves by the time the car had reached its destination and its driver had had a chance to make her way over to him.

"Are you okay?" asked a sweet, concerned voice, and Soul pulled his eyes from the sidewalk to find a tall, slim woman standing in front of him, dark eyes and dark hair and dark suit backlit by a streetlamp. "I didn't mean to startle you, I'm just not used to anyone being out when I come home late -- "

"I'm all right," Soul said, though his teeth still wanted to chatter, and managed what he hoped was a charming smile. "I shouldn't have been standing in the street, really. I've just -- had kind of a long day."

Her expression turned sympathetic, endearingly so, and Soul would have totally fallen for it if he couldn't see the steel underneath all that sweetness. "I've been there before," she said, and offered him her hand. "I'm Tsubaki. I don't think we've met -- did you move in across the street a little while ago? I'm so sorry -- my roommate and I meant to come by, but we've both been busy and haven't made it."

"I'm Soul," Soul offered, taking her hand -- firm grip, no way she was nearly as nice as she was pretending, her fingers calloused in the way that he’d bet they’ve been gunpowder-stained more than once. "And yeah, that was me -- us. Don't worry about not coming by, things have been crazy for us, too -- but it's nice to meet you."

She gave him a starry smile. "Very nice to meet you! Would you like to come in for a cup of cocoa? It's a bit late for coffee, after all."

Soul considered. This was one of the few neighbors he _hadn't_ met or at least seen yet, and she lived only two houses down from Medusa -- and he wasn't even sure that the house between her and Black Star's supposed witch was even occupied, since he hadn't really seen any activity from it. Even setting that aside, Tsubaki was intriguing if only because of the disparity between her presentation and the kind of -- vaguely violent competence, maybe -- that seemed to be hidden under her kind exterior.

"Sure," he said after a moment, and she gave him another blinding smile. "It's kinda chilly out here anyway, guess I'm not used to this desert climate."

"It's a little weird at first," she said with a sympathetic smile, and gestured for him to follow her.

Soul obliged and noted her car, an older but well-kept Acura; noted immaculate path lighting and immaculate landscaping; the porch had neatly-kept plants that he didn't even recognize but that were nonetheless very attractive. He followed her into a house with a much more well put together interior than its exterior would have suggested, with tasteful touches where they were called for and understated colorful accents that made him feel even more as though Black Star was destroying any hope that they might have had of cultivating even the appearance of a respectable home. He let Tsubaki sit him down at a nice built-in breakfast nook and tried to relax while she made cocoa, rolling his shoulders and trying to force the muscles to loosen before the mere way he carried himself tipped someone off to the whole 'definitely a cop' thing.

He might actually have been dozing, cradled as nicely as he was in the soft padding of the bench, when Tsubaki set a giant mug of cocoa topped with whipped cream in front of him and startled him back to the real world. Even the _mugs_ were nice, oversized and probably handmade pottery, and the whipped cream had just enough of a dusting of cinnamon to really make Soul feel like his life was even more of a mess than he'd expected.

"Thanks," he said, and she settled into the bench across from him with her own mug.

"Oh, it's no trouble," she said, scooping a bit of cream up with a spoon. "It's nice to have a neighbor over, especially since I've been working second shift. I hardly even see my roommate anymore. She should be down in a minute, though, I texted her and I know she's not in bed quite yet."

"Oh, you didn't have to -- " Soul started, thinking to go with the usual niceties, oh, you don't have to go out of your way, oh, I couldn't possibly inconvenience both of you, oh, it's nice to meet you but I couldn't _possibly_ \--

"Tsu?" said a voice from the hall that led onto the kitchen/living area, and Soul's blood went absolutely frigid.

"Maka?" he and Tsubaki said in unison, her tired and familiar whereas Soul sounded more than slightly panicked and hated himself for it because he _wasn't even supposed to be here and this was definitely going to fuck everything up_. Tsubaki, whose gaze had shifted to Maka, turned back to Soul after a moment, lifting one perfectly-drawn eyebrow in what came off as a delicate kind of confusion.

Soul swallowed panic as best he could.

" _Soul?_ "

Soul could hear her bare feet on the wooden floor as she came closer and realized, despite his best efforts, that he really was not as good at forcing himself to be calm as he thought, not when it was something like _this_. Stick a gun in his face, fine, but faced with the spectre of the woman he'd fallen for just in time for her to leave the state in the middle of their college years, well. He wrapped his hands around the still too-hot cocoa mug, let the burn of it force him to some kind of clarity, took a deep breath, and stood, sidling sideways out of the breakfast nook before she could get closer and corner him.

Maka Albarn stopped short when he turned to face her, cocoa still in hand, heart in his throat, and _god._ She was wearing a flannel shirt and gym shorts -- her pajamas -- but somehow that did absolutely nothing to diminish the fact that over the years she'd perfected that terrifying stare she had when things were not happening to expectation. She didn't _say_ 'what the fuck,' because she didn't have to; the look in those green eyes was more than enough to make him have to fight the urge to hunch his shoulders and apologize. He very quietly asked the entire universe not to let her ask him too pointedly what he was doing here, because he might just fucking tell her and good lord he was the _worst_ detective.

"Um," Tsubaki said from behind him, and Soul heard her get to her feet. "Maka, this is Soul, our new neighbor. Do you two know each other?"

Soul looked at Maka and Maka looked at him and they had a moment of shared understanding that was both perfect and incredibly weird, because that look said that they both wished quite fervently that they could still pretend that this was just a case of mistaken identity.

"We went to college together," Soul offered after a few seconds, before the pause got to be suspiciously long.

"Briefly," Maka said, expression smoothing out into something harmless now that Tsubaki could see her. "Before I was recruited."

"Oh!" Tsubaki said, and Soul could _hear_ the smile in her voice. "Well, I'll let you two catch up, then. I had a long day, so I won't complain if you give me an excuse to get to bed early."

"Tsu -- " Maka started, something darker in her eyes than simple concern, but Tsubaki was already on her way across the kitchen, mug in hand and long legs ensuring she made her escape well before Maka could decide to do anything to stop her.

Soul watched this exchange, considered his options, and at length just sat back down. It wasn't like Maka was going to let him _leave_ , at least not until she was satisfied.

After a minute Maka followed suit, sliding onto the bench across from him where Tsubaki had been sitting. They watched each other for maybe another minute, until Soul silently slid his cocoa across the table to her; she couldn't help her half-smile but she took the mug anyway and drank some, looking a little more relaxed when she put it back down.

"So," she said, and Soul gave her a smile that he hoped was charming and not scared.

"Long time no see," he said, as if that could forestall the inevitable.

Maka tapped her fingers on the mug for a few seconds. "It has been a while," she allowed, but her tone was edged, just enough that Soul was tempted to just bare his neck and be done with it. "But are you really telling me, Soul Evans, that you are my new neighbor? That _you_ are currently shacking up with not one but _two_ steady boyfriends? Because that’s not what your Facebook status says."

"I," Soul said, and stopped, but there really wasn't any getting round it. He took a deep breath and pressed his palms to the tabletop, then shrugged and put on his best sheepish smile. "Yeah, I am, it's the craziest thing -- "

He cut himself off, and not because regurgitating his cover story was hard; no, it was because Maka was _laughing hysterically_ and looked damn near about to slide out of her seat and onto the floor.

"Oh my _god_ ," she gasped after several minutes in which Soul exercised saintlike patience and waited without interrupting for her to wear herself out. "Are you for _real?_ Is that why you moved here? Is it why you were wandering the neighborhood in the middle of the night? How did this even _happen_ , Soul, oh my god, I'm so sorry I left if this is what I missed -- "

"You should be sorry you left for better reasons than that," Soul said with what he hoped was grave dignity, because she really _should_ have better reasons to be sorry about the circumstances of her departure than missing something entertaining. "And no, I was out walking for reasons unrelated to my relationship status."

"Good to hear," she said through a fading smile, and drank some more cocoa. "Hey, Soul -- did Tsubaki happen to say anything to you? I've been -- kind of worried about her lately."

Soul made a face that had to have looked bizarre, a mix of confusion and concern and man, was he ever falling back into old habits way too fast. "Say anything? No, she just wanted to make sure I was okay after she nearly ran my dumb ass over for standing in the street in the middle of the night. Why? I mean -- who is she, anyway?"

"My roommate," Maka said, very carefully, and Soul raised an eyebrow at her that made her grimace at him. "Fine, fine, I guess she's my ex, though it's up for debate if there was ever a formal relationship to start with. Before you ask, we're on good terms, no hard feelings, been living here for a couple years now."

" _You_ ," Soul said, surprised beyond words for a minute, then shrugged helplessly when she gave him an arch look. "Okay, sure. I'm glad it worked out, at least? Why are you worried about her?"

Maka drank what had to be most of the remaining cocoa in silence, green eyes gone a bit dark, and finally said, "Have you met our neighbor at the end of the cul de sac, by chance?"

"No," Soul said slowly, endeavoring to control his heartbeat a bit and also to keep his expression inscrutable. "But I've heard about her, and that rainforest thing she has going on is, uh -- "

"Really fucking suspicious? Yeah, same," Maka interrupted, and leaned forward a bit, stare pinning him in place. "So you know she's got this winery that produces extremely expensive wine, right? And that whole hot older woman on the prowl vibe -- so anyway, Tsubaki has gotten very into wine lately, if you catch my drift, and I'm worried -- well." A pause, and her stare went from intense to _terrifying_. "You can leave now or I can explain this, and if I explain this I swear I _will_ shoot you to keep you from telling anyone about it, understand?"

Soul considered several responses to this, not least of which was something along the lines of 'taking after your father these days, I see,' because there had been a memorable instance where Spirit Albarn had mistaken the nature of their relationship and literally _pulled a shotgun on him_ over it.

He did not choose to articulate that statement.

"Is this like, 'don't spread my embarrassing secret' threatening, or like -- 'this is extremely illegal and you'd be compromising an investigation' threatening that you're going for here?" he asked instead, because it was the safest way to put it that Soul could come up with on short notice.

She gave him a long, considering look that did not even break when she finished off his cocoa. Soul, unwilling to rush her because he had a sense of tact and self-preservation on occasion, occupied the time he spent waiting with considering the sequence of increasingly absurd events that had become his life of late, and did not lack for content. It wasn't a great sign that Maka Albarn randomly ending up his neighbor after falling off the map for several years wasn't the strangest thing that had happened in the last few days. That Maka was arguably the sanest person in his life right now both went without saying and was _also_ probably a bad sign.

"So you're seriously telling me that you have two boyfriends," she said after a long pause, interrupting Soul's mental estimations of how long it was going to take Kid and Black Star to engage in actual violence.

"Yup," he said without thinking, because thinking mid-lie was what made you fuck it up.

"And, per our other neighbors, you're doing some kind of from-home work?"

He nodded, shrugged, gave her a moderately confused look that wasn't all that fake.

"Right," she said, and slid out of the booth. "Let me walk you out, it's getting late."

The confused look was not even slightly fabricated this time. "Say what," he said, but Maka already had him by the arm and if he didn't cooperate she was going to just haul his ass off the bench and onto her kitchen floor and that wasn't a look Soul wanted, so he let her pull him out of his seat and drag him, bewildered, to the door.

"Maka, what -- " he tried again once she got him there, but she just shook her head and waited, foot tapping, while he yanked on his shoes and let her pretty much shove him outside.

The surprise -- well, the thing that was much more surprising than anything else happening at that moment, anyway -- was that she followed him out, shutting the door behind her with a finality that made Soul wonder just a little bit if maybe she was about to murder him.

"You're lying to me, and we need to have a chat where Tsubaki won't overhear," she said, voice pitched just low enough that he could barely hear her, and glanced up and down the street before leaning in a bit. "And no, I'm not going to kill you, stop looking at me like that."

"You have literally always given me the impression you wanted to kill me," Soul said, because he couldn't really come up with any other half decent response to an increasingly surreal evening, and Maka snorted at him.

"You're not entirely wrong," she said, then shook her head. "But no. We just need to -- let's say go for a walk. I don't see any cars I don't recognize so I'm going to have to operate on the assumption that no one is _actively_ listening in. Don't suppose we can have a private chat at your place?"

That tore a laugh from Soul that might have been a little hysterical, but that was only fair given the situation. "God no," he said with feeling. "No way in hell. In fact, we're too close already if you want to assure yourself that we're not being recorded in some way, those two are nuts."

"What I figured," Maka said. "Damn security cameras are a huge pain in my ass. Let's walk, then. We haven't seen each other in years; we have a lot of catching up to do."

When she said it like that, Soul kind of believed it. They set off down the street -- _away_ from the cul de sac -- side by side, and it was starting to feel like all Soul ever did was indulge in futile daydreams of having his sidearm back these days.

"This is actually a really nice neighborhood," he said after a minute's silence, because, hell, he didn't know -- maybe Maka actually _did_ want to do some catching up in spite of the extremely strange conversation they'd been having a few minutes ago.

"It's certainly quiet," she said. "At least, it seems that way."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean," Soul said as they passed the house where the nurse and her Etsy witch girlfriend lived.

Maka waved a hand at him. "Not important. Listen. I know you're lying to me, but before I pry that out of you I'll explain a little bit about what's going on with Tsubaki if you will swear to me that you won't tell anyone without my consent. This is _important_ , Soul, there's a lot at stake."

He wanted to laugh, but didn't -- but god, if only she knew. If only she knew even _part_ of it. "Maka," he said, and the regret in his voice was very honest, "I'd love to tell you that there's something crazy going on, but I really _can't._ "

The look she gave him was shuttered, to say the least, green eyes unfathomable and face set in careful, neutral lines. "Well," she said after a minute, as they were heading past the HOA president's house, "I do understand that. We're all just trying to live our normal, everyday lives, right? Sure, I get what you're saying. I even think it's believable. Or I _would_ , if you weren't trying to convince me that you weren't a detective any more, but that's neither here nor there. Let's play along a little more and say I believe you on that. Here's what I'm going to do: I'll tell you a story about my roommate, and then I'll tell you another story about what I've got going on at work, and you can tell me what you think. Okay?"

This woman was going to be the absolute death of him, or at the very least get him messily fired for constantly managing to compromise his cover.

"Fine," Soul said, digging up every last bit of that grave dignity he could manage, which on the whole wasn't much. "Lay it on me."

"You seem to have noticed that our neighbor down the street is a bit unusual," Maka began, and Soul snorted but did not interrupt. "You're not wrong in that assessment. Tsubaki and I did some basic information gathering when she caught our attention, and things got weird almost immediately. The more we looked, the more things didn't quite line up, and eventually we got a very politely worded request from our superiors to leave those files alone."

She paused, and Soul looked at her, considering the Maka Albarn he'd known and the kind of situation she'd found herself in.

"So," he said, "I assume you've been digging around on your own time, then?"

"Not at first," she said, "but then Papa found out and told me that I was to stop effective immediately, so -- "

_That_ Soul could figure out without any help at all. "So you buckled down twice as hard."

Maka gave him a look like maybe she was reconsidering just stabbing him and leaving him for dead in this lovely, peaceful neighborhood after all. "I _continued_ ," she corrected, "but with more discretion. I did wait a while for things to settle down before I started looking again, though, give me some credit. The problem was, Tsubaki had finally met Medusa face to face at the annual neighborhood bake sale, and they really hit it off. At first I thought it was a front to get information, but as it turns out it is definitely _not_. So I've got this woman who I'm convinced is some kind of snake-obsessed -- _witch_ , as stupid as that sounds, and it seems like she has ties to some really bad shit, like the kind of thing the mafia is afraid to mess with, but every file I can find is redacted beyond the point of being useful and I'm not about to talk to a crime family by myself, off the record, about something that seemingly scares them so badly they refuse to cross it."

"Smart," Soul said, and she gave him a withering glare. "So I guess you aren't enjoying the perks that come from your roommate being cozy with the friendly neighborhood distributor of fancy wine and sex toys?" The glare intensified into something that actually made his skin crawl. "No? Okay, I got you. Good choice. Those dildos might have curses on them, who knows."

They'd come round the corner, past Soul's house and over to the community pool, and Maka gave it a meditative look like perhaps she was considering drowning him in it. "It's good to hear you're taking this so seriously," she said, and shook her head at him when Soul tried to correct her because really, no one was taking this shit as seriously as he was at this point, he had to get _away_ from this insanity. "Anyway, let me tell you about work. I've been put on standby -- it's expected that I will be ready to provide assistance to an ongoing situation of some kind at any moment, should I be needed, and they have essentially been paying me to sit on my ass all day."

"I'm proud of you for not murdering anyone," Soul said when she paused to take a breath and organize her thoughts, and that got him a thin smile with just a hint of real humor buried in her eyes.

"Everyone is," she said, and sobered again. "Thing is, Tsubaki's still getting work. They only put _me_ on standby. That's _never happened before_."

"No wonder you're so into this thing with our mutual neighbor," Soul said, with genuine sympathy because if anyone understood having nothing to do and literally losing your mind over it, he did.

That got him another flash of legitimate warmth, but it was expectedly short-lived. "Yeah. So let me tell you something else -- I made friends when I was in training, which I'm sure is a stretch for you to believe, but I _did_. And I've heard some stuff, Soul, and I can connect dots on my own. Heard some stuff about the Star Clan, and some other stuff about an up and coming young agent whose father everyone knows and no one will talk about, and how he's working a real doozy of an undercover case. More importantly, there is no way in hell you'd ever convince me that you voluntarily gave up detective work, so. Care to tell me why you're really here?"

"I'd care to tell you any number of things," Soul said while he frantically tried to figure out what the fuck to say to that, and also because it was for once the complete truth. "Look, it's late. Why don't you stop by tomorrow and meet everybody? If you're working, we can do dinner or something maybe."

Maka gave him a very long, considering look that had him suppressing nervous fidgets. "I'm working from home," she said, arms crossed, looking like she'd rather be forcing him to talk. "How about lunch?"

Well, that was _probably_ enough time, and Soul didn't think she was going to take no for an answer. Maka had never in her _life_ waited an extra five minutes for information she could make someone give her right now. "Yeah, lunch should be fine," he said, and felt his shoulders drop a solid inch when she looked away from him and nodded.

"See you at noon, then," she said -- and _left_ before he could respond, as though that was a thing people did, just leave each other standing alone on a sidewalk in the middle of the night in a weird desert oasis town.

Well.

Soul considered going back down the street to check out Medusa's house, but in light of the rest of his evening decided against it. Better to go home and talk to Kid and try to get some goddamn sleep.


	4. I warned you about that fucking ice cream truck

When Soul dragged himself into Kid's office at one in the morning on the very same day that Black Star had probably compromised their cover and then let the degenerate next door _stay the night_ , Kid considered just not letting him in. He'd had enough utter nonsense for one day, enough stress, enough -- _everything_. Marie had been near to choking with laughter when she'd called him following his report, and if that wasn't bad enough the tone in her voice once she got down to business was much, much worse.

Apparently he was on some kind of notice. Her conversation had eventually taken a hard turn into some nonsense about ice cream that definitely was not actually about ice cream, except for the part where she'd lowkey threatened him into agreeing to go outside the next day and buy a fucking ice cream sandwich from the truck that seemed to be perpetually circling the neighborhood, and he'd be lying if he couldn't admit at least to himself that the idea of eating whatever it was that truck sold under the moniker 'ice cream' made his blood run cold.

And then Soul came in.

"So I met our neighbors across the street," he said, and the thing was he looked so spooked and somehow also so _guilty_ that Kid's fingers itched for the mezcal he kept hidden in the antique globe he'd set up in the corner by his skull collection.

He called Marie back after that conversation, once he'd gotten Soul the fuck out of his office and poured a generous three fingers of smoky liquor in the hopes that it'd settle his nerves and the panic that wanted him to just run screaming into the night. He called her back on the secure line, the _emergency line_.

"I'll have to call Azusa," she said, and the and the way she said the other chief's name made a chill run down his spine in a non-trivial way. "Expect instructions tomorrow. What are you planning on serving for lunch?"

"A cheese plate," he said, confused at the change in tone and praying it would be acceptable. "With appropriate wine pairings, of course -- "

"Good," Marie said, and hung up.

Perfect. So he'd have to fake whatever was necessary until -- well, until the fabled ice cream truck showed up, he guessed. In the meantime he'd have to get up early and go pick out cheese and wine and pray that the local stores sold _appropriate_ wine, he was going to need beaujolais and some good burgundy and a riesling because he was desperate and he wasn't even sure they had glassware --

Well, that didn't matter. He had a credit card that Marie was responsible for, and if he could get some alcohol into this supposed agent that Soul had gone to college with all the better because he really needed to figure out who she was and what she was playing at and how much she actually knew versus what she'd inferred. He drafted up a quick list of potential cheese and wine pairings, added some accompaniment suggestions depending on what he could find easily, checked the cameras -- Black Star was snoring in the basement, sprawled untidily on his couch in glow-in-the-dark boxers, Soul was making such a disgruntled face in the kitchen it appeared he was trying to will The Void into existence so he could fling himself at it, and Kid would rather not dwell on the situation spread-eagled in the guest room’s bed -- and finished his mezcal before retiring for the night.

/

He dragged Soul with him to the store because by god it was only just that the man participate in this disaster of his own making.

"We have to be seen in public together, _dear_ ," he said that morning after Giriko had left, sipping coffee and watching Black Star make a stack of chocolate chip pancakes huge enough to choke an ox.

Soul made a face at him but was distracted before he could say anything by Star dropping a plate of pancakes in front of him, pancakes liberally smothered in --

"Oh my god, you drew a whipped cream _dick_ on my breakfast," Soul said, sounding both deeply offended and as though he were having a real problem not laughing. Kid's poker face remained unmoved, because after a few weeks in Black Star's company he was functionally immune to pretty much everything.

"Yeah I _did_ ," Star yelled back over his shoulder, his general shirtlessness and frilly apron somehow adding to his general fight-me aura instead of detracting from it. "And if you know what's good for you, you'll gobble that cream cock down like a good boy and you won't give me any more sass about it, either."

Soul put his head in his hands for a few moments, muttered 'name of your sex tape,' sighed heavily, and seemed to come to the conclusion that chocolate chip pancakes were still chocolate chip pancakes, even if they _did_ have a dick drawn on them in whipped cream.

"Fine, we can go once I eat," he said, smearing the whipped cream into a less horrible shape. "Beats staying here and dealing with more of _this._ "

"Next time it's gonna be anatomically correct pancakes," Star announced, and gave Soul a suggestive wink over his shoulder as he licked whipped cream from his fingers. "They're gonna have _pubes_."

"Forget it, can we leave _now_ ," Soul said, no more than two bites into his food.

"Eat," Kid said, expression still blank as he did the morning crossword.

Black Star sauntered in while Soul was still eating, platter of pancakes in hand and with seemingly every intention of covering them in chocolate syrup. "So what's for lunch?"

"Cheese plate," Kid said, filling in 'vainglorious' for fifteen down.

"You got some balls, doing crosswords in pen," Star said, dropping his plate onto the table and employing whipped cream and chocolate syrup with nauseating abandon. "Mom always said that was a sure sign of a disturbed mind. Anyway, what kinda cheese plate? The fancy kind, I assume, if it's lunch. Olives, cured meats, wine pairings?"

Kid raised his eyes enough to give Black Star a look of mild surprise and was rewarded with a chocolate syrup-stained grin.

"What, thought I didn't know about real food? Are you _ever_ gonna stop underestimating me, bro? I know about this sorta shit." In went an obscenely huge wedge of pancake, and Star spent a blessed minute chewing. "Anyway, I've got the bread part covered. Be sure you get some good pickles if you decide not to get olives, okay? Maybe honeycomb if they have it."

Kid _hated_ this. He filled in 'presumptive,' decided he'd had enough of Black Star _and_ the crossword, and stood, gesturing to Soul that he'd better get moving.

/

When their doorbell rang circa noon, Soul was not in the kitchen because getting in the way of Kid and Black Star while they did whatever the hell they were doing and tried to stab each other in the process was not something he figured would end well. He was, instead, settled on the couch -- which had been cleaned again because Kid was the model of constant vigilance -- watching some generic action movie and trying not to be any more nervous than was strictly necessary.

Except Star pretty much teleported to the door as soon as the bell rang, leaving Kid to more or less throw down whatever he'd had in his hands -- he'd been in the middle of arranging the elaborate cheese plate of his dreams, as far as Soul could tell -- and rush after him, no doubt with the hope of running interference or at least affecting some kind of damage control.

"Hi," he heard Maka say, doing her best to be friendly when confronted by someone who was not the man she'd been expecting.

"Hey, sister," Black Star said, the smarmy grin evident in his tone. "Heard you know my man Soul. Whassup?"

Soul had never in his life heard someone say 'wassup' seductively, but by god Black Star managed.

" _Hello,_ " Kid said, and something about it drew Soul's eyes despite his best efforts to just not be involved in any way with anything Kid or Star did, cover or no. He was -- _draped across Black Star's back_ , god that was an image Soul could have happily lived his life without -- and as Soul watched, he reached down, palmed one of Black Star's _ass cheeks_ , and gave it enough of a presumably sensuous squeeze that Star actually _shut up_ for five seconds. "Why don't you go get lunch ready, darling?"

Soul wished he could crawl under the couch and never leave. He wished there were a surgical procedure to remove that image from his brain, to remove him from this _house_ , to make him never ever go to a bar at night in New York _ever again_ because this was what _happened_.

There was a pause, and not a good one; it was the kind that made the tips of Soul's ears burn, the kind that preceded catastrophe, the kind that meant --

"But _baby_ ," Star said after a moment, and he was really just _simpering,_ he was _going there_ , Kid _obviously_ didn't realize what he'd started, "you know I love it when you're the one handling the pickles -- "

Kid's visible hand tightened to such an extent that Soul was pretty sure he was literally knuckle deep in the muscle of Black Star's ass, and Soul was still wishing he could remove his brain and put it directly into the food processor when Kid suddenly gave up the fight, said something like "Excuse me I have to take this," and _ran_ _outside_ to the chiming background music of -- an ice cream truck? Regardless, he nearly threw Black Star into the coat closet again in the process, and left Maka off-balance and staring in the doorway with the haste of his departure.

"C'mon inside, sweet pea," Black Star said once he'd recovered, marginally less smarmy than he had been and admirably not reacting to the fact that he probably had some pretty deep bruising developing thanks to Kid. "Who knows what Kid's doing, you know how artistic types can be. I'll get you a glass of wine and finish up the cheese plate and then we'll be ready to have a nice lunch and talk business."

Soul sighed and hauled himself to his feet. He couldn't in good conscience leave anyone alone with Black fucking Star, no matter how much he needed to excise the last several minutes from his memory. "Hey, Maka," he said, halfway to the door, and managed to intercept her and Black Star before the other man made anyone's day worse than he already had. He even managed a smile, a real one, achieved at least in part by remembering the last time he'd seen her at college before she'd disappeared.

The rest of the affection in his expression came from the fact that she looked very honestly torn between running the fuck away and murdering everyone nearby, a conundrum so essentially Maka that Soul couldn't help but grin.

"Hey, Soul," she said, and looked grateful to be given the excuse to abandon Black Star's presence for Soul's. "Nice place. Some boyfriends you've got."

"They're extraordinary," Soul said, because it was the most complimentary word he could come up with that wasn't an outright lie, and led her to the dining area, where Kid had already set up multiple small decanters of wine. "Kid and I picked out some great cheese, and Star -- "

He was cut off by Black Star slamming down a more ornate pewter platter than Soul had even begun to suspect they owned, which meant it had probably been in the house when they arrived. The important thing was that it actually had a much more nicely displayed assortment of cheeses, sliced cured meats, and accompaniments than Soul would've expected from something that Black Star had made the final calls on.

"This is _Jimothy_ ," Star announced, seemingly indicating the toasted bread slices that occupied one corner of the tray. "He died for your lunch. Please enjoy."

Maka blinked at Soul, blinked at the platter of food, and gave Black Star a quizzical look. "The bread?"

" _YES_ ," Star said, somehow at deafening volume. "I've been getting into baking. This bread was from one of my starters."

"Named Jimothy?" Maka asked, reaching for a piece of bread and a bit of chevre.

"Of _course_ ," Star said, grinning hugely and grabbing himself a bit of blue. "If you don't care about something enough to name it, you probably shouldn't be fooling around with it, you know?"

"Good point," Maka said, and added a judicious bit of fig spread before taking an appreciative bite. "This is _great._ You _made_ this bread? Can I take some home?"

"Absolutely," Black Star said, hands on his hips, chest visibly inflating with pride. "Now, don't forget the wine, I think Kid has a nice dry riesling picked out for that one, may as well do it right -- "

"We don't have time for this," Kid interrupted, silhouetted in the front door and then striding across the room, a half-eaten ice cream sandwich in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. "Maka Albarn? You're to assist us effective immediately."

Maka sputtered a bit, swallowed an unintentionally large amount of wine, and let Kid hand her the bit of paper.

" _Bro I warned you about that fucking ice cream truck_ ," Black Star bellowed, grabbing Kid's arm and dragging him in close so he could examine what remained of the ice cream sandwich. "What the fuck possessed you to go _near_ that hellvan?"

"Sorry," Soul said, not as an apology but in that way that meant 'I'm sorry, it appears you have lost any ability to make any form of sense and I'm gonna need some clarification,' "you're saying that your _ice cream sandwich_ told you to get Maka involved in this? Moreover, you're saying you bought ice cream from an ice cream truck and actually chose to _eat it?_ "

Kid didn't respond, probably because he was too busy trying to keep Black Star from literally eating his fingers along with the ice cream sandwich he was trying to cram into his mouth.

"Okay," Soul said, after evaluating the wrestling match, the likelihood it was going to take the wine and the table with it, and the way Maka had gone a little pale reading whatever note Kid had given her, "I'm gonna call Marie."

Everyone froze.

"Please don't," Kid said, strained, and not just because he'd managed to somehow get Black Star into a headlock.

"Then how about you sit the fuck down, eat lunch, and tell me why the hell we need assistance," Soul said, and he hated being the adult so fucking much, especially in a situation where there were _federal agents_ he was supposed to be _working for_. "Exactly _what_ would we need assistance _with?_ "

Kid extricated himself from Black Star, gave the remains of his ice cream a withering look, handed it to his butt-bruised boyfriend, and, after a moment spent brushing imaginary dirt from his clothes, took a seat with an admirable amount of dignity. Without answering, he poured himself a generous glass of dark wine, drank an eyebrow-raising portion of it in one go, and finally said, "That knowledge is apparently above my pay grade."

"Same," Maka said, and took a seat with a cautious glance Black Star's way. "I was told only that I might be called upon, with no mention of the nature of the work."

"There _is_ no work," Soul said, exasperated. "We're just _living here,_ and we're so bored that Star is making bread and I'm drafting up zombie apocalypse contingency plans!"

"Well," Maka said, one green eye slanting his way, "you're not entirely off the mark with that, it seems."

"Oh, god," Soul said, and let himself sink into a chair so he could put his head in his hands. "Not you, too. Is there something in the water here?"

Black Star, ice cream smeared across his face, grinned hugely. "I've heard some stuff 'bout frogs -- "

" _No_ ," Kid said, and against all odds Black Star chose to shut his mouth. "Agent Albarn, why do you say that?"

Maka sighed and shrugged, let Kid pour her more wine and picked out some cheese and accompaniments before she answered. "I don't like to say it, but there's definitely something -- _off_ going on in this neighborhood. Something I can't explain without sounding like a crazy person. I've been trying to find some logical explanation for it, but so far I've got absolutely nothing."

"Listen," Black Star said before anyone could stop him, "werewolves killed my family, so I can guarantee you that whatever it is, you're not actually crazy." He paused, ignored Maka’s dubious stare while reaching for some bread, and cackled when Kid tried to shush him. "At least, you're not crazy for _this_. For being friends with Soul, you might just be."

" _Hey,_ " Soul said, and Star gave him a thumbs up.

"Takes one to know one, right?" he said, turning back to Maka. "I _love_ this guy, he's got great taste in movies. Anyway, what's going on in the hood? I don't trust that crazy lady with the rainforest yard, and the guys who live behind us are really fucking something, too."

"Yes," Maka said, drawing the word out a bit, thinking as she ate. "I'm not sure about those two. I'm _really_ not sure about your neighbor, Mifune, to say nothing of _his_ neighbor and the twins. There's a lot that I'm not able to find out about them. Sometimes that's harmless and sometimes it isn't."

"I'm starting to think that there's no way it's harmless," Kid said, expression and tone as dark as most of his hair, and after a minute he got up and went into the kitchen to fetch the wine bottles he'd uncorked for lunch. "I'll look into it. What do you know about the woman down the street?"

"I know my roommate is way too interested in the wine and sex toys she sells," Maka said before she could think it through, and Soul stopped contemplating the void so he could glance up and give her an incredulous look. She made a face at him.

"Sorry," she continued, sipping wine as if she hoped it might make things make sense. "Medusa's been here longer than I have. The groundskeeper is relatively new -- within the past couple months. Every file I've been able to find involving her has been nearly redacted into solid black, though, and most of them I can't even _get_ to. I told Soul yesterday -- when I started looking into it, I was told to stand down."

"They really should've known better," Soul said, and helped himself to some food, grinning when Maka glared at him.

"You two are cute when you flirt," Black Star said, earning him a smack on the back of the head from Kid and two equally startled stares from Soul and Maka. "They _are_ , this is _precious,_ don't act all fuckin' offended, it's not like our cover _matters_ now -- "

" _Anyway,_ " Maka said, somehow drowning Star out long enough to reassume control over the conversation, "yes, I didn't exactly take that order as intended. I know how to cover my tracks well enough. The groundskeeper was actually the first thing that I really couldn't explain through ordinary means, though I admit that some of the leaps of logic I've had to make don't fully hold up, either."

"Groundskeeper," Black Star said, then snapped his fingers. "Right! That guy who has the weird fixation on everyone else's lawns, right? Insists on handling it all himself? One eye?"

"Yes, that's Free," Maka said, and gave Black Star a thoughtful look as she ate a cornichon. "Who _are_ you, anyway?"

"Not important," Star said before Kid could say whatever he'd been about to and thankfully before Soul could say something truly stupid like 'how have you not realized this yet'. "The important thing is that that guy is _totally a werewolf_ , and I'm really not making this one up, I've _seen_ it with my own eyes. I might have been about to pass out from blood loss at the time, but I did _see_ it, I promise."

Maka stopped mid-chew; Kid's head whipped around so he could stare; Soul just reached for more wine.

" _What,_ " Kid said eventually, after Maka had remembered she was in the middle of eating and swallowed her food, after Soul had finished his wine, after Black Star had stopped smirking at everyone and turned to Kid with a haughty lift to his brows.

"Oh sure, _now_ you want to act like you believe anything I say," Black Star said, arms crossed, expression serious the way it had been the day they moved in and he'd slammed Kid into the wall, a fine tension in him that Soul's brain coded as 'ready to kill a man'. "You ready for storytime, _agent?_ "

Soul was really not a fan of the way that Black Star occasionally reminded them in a very real, very cold-chill-down-the-spine way that he was legitimately _dangerous_ , that he was a -- well, that he was what he said, as far as Soul could tell: a ninja crime lord's heir.

Kid seemed to be even less of a fan, to judge by the cant of his jaw and the tension in his face, and Maka had set her wine glass down with deliberate slowness and leaned back, like maybe she'd come armed and was considering her options on that front.

"Sure," Kid said just in time to keep things from escalating in directions unknown. "Tell us what really happened, Star. Tell us why we should believe you when you say the guy down the street is a _werewolf,_ and it was witches that killed your entire family."

Soul said, “I thought it was werewolves that killed them--”

“It was werewolves _summoned_ by witches, how incompetent _are_ you guys?” Star sighed, leaning back in his chair to expertly balance on the two rear legs as if chairs were intended to be sat in that way, and gave Maka an unpleasant grin. "So, for those of you who haven't been playing along, I'm _kind of a big deal._ You work for the feds, so you _know_ Star Clan."

"Oh, no," Maka said, and pressed a hand to her temple. "I didn't want to be _right_."

"Oh, _yes_ ," Star said, and the grin was back to its usual blinding craziness. "So I'm sure you heard my whole family got murdered with extreme prejudice and that I ended up in protective custody. I'm sure you know that the going belief is that I killed them all." The grin faded into the most somber expression Soul had ever seen on the man. "Listen. I didn't. You don't kill family, or at least, _I_ don't. Dad seemed to have other ideas."

Kid gave him a weirdly sympathetic look. "It's hard not being the favorite son," he said, and ignored everyone when all three of them looked at him like he'd grown an extra head.

"So what happened is," Star continued after it became clear that Kid wasn't going to keep talking or acknowledge any of them, "this witch -- literal witch, not kidding, never was -- Arachne showed up and convinced Dad that she could summon him some kind of unstoppable killing machine that would do anything he said, thus allowing him to slaughter our rivals and take the fuck over. As you can imagine, he was pretty into it. The catch was that if you want to summon something badass you obviously have to offer it something badass in return, and Dad wasn't about to give it anything of _his_ because he is a selfish, power-hungry motherfucker."

"Crime lord would suggest that," Kid said, tone more dry even than the riesling he'd picked out.

Star flipped him the bird without even looking his way, opting instead to steal the _entire wedge of brie_ they'd set out, slather it in fig spread, and eat it like a slice of pizza. "The obvious solution," he said around a huge mouthful of expensive cheese, "at least when you're my father and a hateful witch in cahoots, is: sacrifice your eldest son who you don't like anyway but who is also, conveniently, an _incredible badass_."

"Which obviously did not work out," Soul supplied, chewing on a piece of bread that was in all honesty quite delicious.

"No, I definitely fucked that one up for them," Black Star said, chair still balanced as though it were bolted to the floor, mouth still full of brie, Kid still looking like he might have a stroke at any moment for any of the multitudinous sins Star was committing by simply existing in that moment. "I didn't even mean to, they just caught me by surprise and some stuff happened and next thing you know I took out half the summoning circle and wrecked up the room and instead of a badass monster assassin thing, they got Free, the world's least scary werewolf. Dad was furious. He called Arachne fat and incompetent and insulted her dress and that's why she killed everybody. I knew it was coming as soon as I saw her face when he said it, so of course the first thing I did when I woke up was get the hell out of dodge."

"You took a nap first?" Maka asked, incredulous, and Black Star rolled his eyes.

"Blood loss, sacrifice, you get the idea. I had allies, of course, and they got me out and patched me up and put me to bed somewhere safe." A pause, and he sighed. "Good thing, too, or she'd have gotten me with all the rest."

"Wait," Kid said, and Star gave him a politely questioning look as if they weren't discussing the horrible murders of his entire family. "If you recognized Free, why -- "

"Dude, he's not a threat by himself," Black Star said. "I thought maybe the guy was just trying to like, live his weird life now that he's been accidentally summoned and set free, and I wasn't _sure_ until a couple days ago when I actually _saw_ him. But if Medusa down the street is Arachne's sister, he's _not_ by himself, and he could at any moment eat our faces off because even the least scary werewolf in the world is still _pretty fuckin' scary_ and I have no doubt she'd order him to do it if she knew who we were _."_

"I'm willing to believe that Medusa and her gardener are dangerous," Kid said after a moment's consideration. Star looked at him like he wished he could just throw him off a cliff and dust his hands. "But I'm going to have to see someone turn into a werewolf with my own two eyes to believe that part of this story. Sorry, Star, that's just how it works."

"So just to clarify," Maka said before anyone could try and throw anybody else around, "the whole gay threesome thing is part of your cover?"

" _Yes,_ " Soul said before Black Star could say something awful or Kid could hurt himself rolling his eyes.

"If the thing you're wondering is how your old friend got involved," Kid said, still drinking wine and eyeing Black Star like he was planning an elaborate dismemberment, "it's because Black Star went out drinking the night before he was supposed to go into witness protection and ended up dragging Soul to a laboratory that no one was supposed to know existed. My limited options were to kill him, leave him with a doctor of questionable morals and sanity who wanted to test memory drugs on him, or convince his superior officers to let me borrow him for a while, so I did what I thought at the time was the ethical thing." He gave Star a narrow look. "Lately I wonder about that, though."

" _Excuse you_ , we are _blood brother besties,_ " Star said, arms crossed, chest puffed up, rooster levels of indignant.

Maka hid a snicker in her wine and Soul rubbed one hand across his face like he thought it'd make anything less ridiculous.

"All right," Kid said after a minute, at last abandoning alcohol for food. "I'm sure your lunch break is nearly over, agent, and I don't want to keep you longer than I should, lest we arouse suspicion. This is still an undercover op, after all. Feel free to continue complaining that you're not being given work."

"I'll tell Tsu that I'm just hanging out with an old friend," Maka said, and Soul looked up in time to see her waving one hand dismissively. "She loves that sort of thing. Honestly she'll probably just be so glad that I'm getting out of the house that she won't ask too many questions."

"Good," Kid said. "Think you could come back later tonight? We need to put together an actual plan, starting with a good line of communications so you don't spend so much time over here that people get suspicious."

"Tsubaki's been working night shifts," Maka said, shrugging. "No problem. See you around nine, maybe? I'll bring my files with me."

"That works," Kid said, and Black Star gave Maka finger guns as she stood, pausing a moment when the wine she'd been putting away made itself known.

"Before I go," she said, and something about her tone made Soul believe that she was, in fact, about to ask a legitimate question and not just stalling for time, "Kid -- is it _your_ father I've heard so many weird stories about?"

Kid's expression settled into something a little harried and a lot tired. "Yes," he said, "that's him. Don't ask me what he does, don't ask me if aliens are real, don't ask me if he's mind controlling the director. The only thing I can tell you is that yes, that's my father."

"Right," Maka said, and turned to head for the door. "Thanks for lunch, all of you." She gave them a wry smile, nose and eyes crinkling a bit. "I'm pretty sure it was nice meeting you."

Kid stood as well, took her hand, shook it; said, "The pleasure was mine, I assure you. Thank you for not leaving as soon as Star answered the door."

That made her laugh, something warm and delighted that Soul hadn't realized he kinda missed in his life. "Oh, don't worry about _that_. You've got nothing on the neighborhood events."

" _Shit,_ " Black Star said, out of his chair so suddenly that it fell over, making the other three people in the room whirl to face him. "The barbeque! Shit, that's _soon_. I gotta get supplies, I -- Soul, come on, we gotta find someone to sell us a ton of meat and I've gotta get some roll dough set up and we have to make _sauce_ , we do not have time for you to be hanging around hoping your crush notices you!"

"Star -- " Soul and Kid said in unison, but there was neither time nor hope of it slowing him. Star had grabbed Soul and dragged him halfway to the garage, had already produced his mirrored aviators from who knew where and was in the process of putting a second pair on Soul by the time Soul's frazzled brain processed what was happening.

"I'll see you tonight, girl," Black Star said to Maka as he shoved Soul through the garage door. "Welcome to the team!"

And they were gone in a cacophony of squealing tires and burning brake pads as Black Star peeled out of the garage and all but drifted around the corner leaving the neighborhood, Soul's hands white-knuckled on the armrests as he asked any higher power that might be listening to please just end this nightmare and let him wake up in his own bed already.


	5. these are not the boys I wanted to talk about

Not even twelve hours later, Soul caught himself thinking nostalgically about that moment as if it had been a simpler, better time.

Well. It kind of _had been_ , considering the current situation.

"Don't make me get the zip ties," Maka growled at the shirtless man in the bathtub, and this time Soul actually _did_ have a gun available but god he did not want it, in a startling turn of events. More accurately he didn't want to _need_ it, but --

"Just you fucking _try_ and tie me the fuck up, you kinky b -- "

There were two distinct sounds: Maka's hand hitting the side of Giriko's head and the sound of his face smacking into the shower wall.

"I'm not really into hurting people who are already injured, especially when I'm supposed to be the one stitching them up, but by god, you asshole, you will _keep a civil tongue in your head_ ," Maka said, voice low and dangerous and nightmare-inducing levels of angry. "I know you're all jacked up on adrenaline and who knows what else, but try to remember that _you_ came to _us_ looking for help."

"Justin is going to show up _any minute_ , and when he does he's going to have your guts for garters," Giriko said, and while Soul wasn't up for anything that the man was talking about he couldn't deny that Maka might have literally slapped some sense into him because at least he sounded _calmer_ now.

"I'm not worried about your _partner_ ," Maka said, and Soul watched her scuffle with Giriko as she tried to get him to let her work on the cuts on his arm, none of which were trivial. "The faster you let me handle this, the faster you'll be able to do whatever it is you think you can do to keep us from getting murdered. Which reminds me -- what the hell is going on that you think a supposedly law-abiding citizen is going to break into his neighbor's house and presumably kill them all?"

Giriko looked at her like he wanted to set the entire world on fire, like maybe it wasn't so much personal as Maka just happened to be the closest target for his murderous tendencies, but he nonetheless let her stretch his arm out and start cleaning cuts. "We're both highly trained, lady," he said, and the blood on his face and in his mouth made everything he said that much scarier. "This is what happens when two guys who've spent their lives learning new ways to fight have a disagreement."

"I don't believe you," Maka said, and punctuated that statement with a swipe of antiseptic across one of the deeper cuts that made Giriko hiss and curse her in lurid detail. "These are knife wounds. You got into a _knife fight_ , and whoever did this was not playing around. You know what they don't really train people to do these days if those people are doing legitimate work? _Have_ _knife fights_."

"Shows what you know," Giriko hissed from between clenched teeth as she applied the first of many bandages.

"Ugh, stop," Maka said, and turned a little so she could look at Soul. "Can you get someone to bring us a glass of saltwater? He needs to stop swallowing blood or he's going to hurl."

"I'm not leaving," Soul said, which was inane because, once again, he had a walkie talkie on hand. Maka was kind enough not to point that out; she just cocked an eyebrow at him and went back to cleaning Giriko up. Soul grabbed the accursed thing, tried not to think about the damn Jeep, and put in Maka's request in as impartial a tone as possible despite the fact that Maka and Giriko still kind of looked like they might bite each other. He then got to listen to Kid and Black Star bicker for several minutes about who would actually do it -- Kid was watching security footage in case Justin did launch an assault, and Black Star was in all likelihood on the roof or up a tree doing the same thing except in person, and neither thought the other was doing anything truly important.

Eventually Kid showed up with a glass of warm saltwater, looking harried and annoyed -- probably because the reason he'd been the one to fetch the water was because Black Star really _was_ up a tree and getting down would take too long. "Giriko," he said, pushing past Soul so he could stand behind Maka and give Giriko his best flat, this-is-unacceptable look, "I expect an explanation. You can't pretend like you don't owe us anything when you have, in literal fact, endangered a house full of civilians by your own admission."

"There's no way you're all civilians," Giriko said, but he took the water and obediently rinsed out his mouth with it until he quit spitting pink.

"Just like there's no way you're doing any kind of legal work," Kid said, and Soul twitched when he saw Giriko's grip on the side of the tub go white-knuckled for a few seconds before relaxing. "I can't stay here and listen to your excuses because I have to go make sure your housemate isn't about to invade my home, but I expect you to tell Maka and Soul the truth, if only because they're saving you a trip to the hospital that would be hard to explain." He paused in the door, heedless of the fact that that meant Soul was still pressed uncomfortably against the sink. "And also, because we're now being forced to defend not only ourselves but you from an attack, simply by virtue of the fact that you're _in our house_. And because now I have to fucking clean _blood_ out of not only my _carpets_ but the _back porch_ , which is the worst of it all, honestly. Get it together and stop getting blood in the tile grout."

It felt like everyone in the room let out a relieved breath they hadn't realized they'd been holding when the door shut behind him.

"Who the fuck _is_ that guy," Giriko growled after a moment, provoked into action by Maka taping more bandages on his arm. "Who the fuck are _any_ of you, honestly."

"If you never find out it'll be for the best," Maka said, sounding weary. "Now that you're not bleeding so much, you can get out of the tub if you promise you won't try to take us out and run away."

"I _never_ run away," Giriko said, but the wild rage had left him with the adrenaline and he hauled himself up out of the tub, only stopping to catch his balance and his breath once before dropping onto the closed lid of the toilet.

"What would you call falling half-conscious on your neighbor's back porch, then," Soul said, nerves fading into annoyance.

Giriko's stare said clearly that he was adding Soul's murder to his future itinerary. "Strategicy," he said, and Soul decided he'd be better served by letting that one go.

Only in favor of the more pressing thing, though: "Hey, you said you did security for Medusa that one time, right," he said, and Giriko made a sound of cautious affirmation, still watching him like he was trying to figure out just how badly Soul needed murdering. "So, were you aware at the time that her gardener is a werewolf?"

"That's old news -- " Giriko said, then clamped his mouth shut, looked away from both of them, and indulged in another string of blistering invective.

"Good one," Maka said into the silence, and started sticking bandages to Giriko's now-clean cuts. "Except for the part where that's still absolutely nuts and I hate that we have multiple unrelated people telling us the same things regarding werewolves." She poked Giriko's cheek and was rewarded with a full-body twitch. "Look at me, dipstick, we need to get all this metal out of your face and clean it up."

"If somebody is gonna fuckin' -- fuckin' _corner me in a bathtub and tend my wounds_ ," Giriko spat, and Soul could tell now that he was really just astronomical levels of freaked out, "god, why's it gotta be _you_ , why's it gotta be a skinny girl who wants to break my face on the shower tile, why -- "

"Soul, empty out that glass and pour some rubbing alcohol in, please," Maka said, ignoring everything Giriko said with the kind of ease that only came from practice. "Giriko, I'm sorry I'm not the blond hottie of your dreams, but you know as well as I do that these piercings need to get clean. I'm sure the last thing you want is an infection in your _face_."

"Yeah, fine," Giriko said, more or less sulking at this point, and held up his hands when Maka moved towards him like she was going to do it herself. "Back off, lady, I can take out my own stuff."

"Sure," Maka said, and leaned against the wall across from him. "Soul, might wanna get away from the mirror. Since I can tell it's gonna take a while for you to get to a point where you can pass through a metal detector, maybe you can fill us in on Medusa while we wait."

"Maybe you can _eat my ass_ ," Giriko said, and when he stood up Soul was reminded very forcibly that Giriko was really just a very _large_ , very fucking _muscular_ dude who moved like he was on intimate terms with strangling people with his bare hands.

"I at least want to know why you think Justin would come in here after you and take us out in the process," Soul said once he was seated on the side of the tub, well out of grabbing range.

Giriko dropped the first of several metal barbells into the cup of rubbing alcohol and grimaced at the really great bruise he was developing on one cheek. "Just best practices," he said, as if that were supposed to make sense.

"Tell me again what business has 'no witnesses' as its motto," Maka said, arms crossed, still leaning against the wall and eyeing the pistol Soul was holding. "Hitman, right?"

"Politician," Giriko said in a low, annoyed snarl, and more metal went into the glass. "You're trying to get me to say something that'll get me in trouble and I've got nothing to tell you. I'm just trying to convince Justin that we need to move the fuck outta here, and he doesn't like it. We ain't all that good at keeping our tempers in check, if you haven't noticed. None of this is your business."

"It's my business because you know something that might help me keep my partner out of a _really_ bad situation," Maka said, her voice low, tight, angry again. "I don't give a good goddamn at this point what you do for a living, Giriko, because you don't seem like you're part of _this_ particular problem. I need to know what the hell Medusa is doing over there, and I need to know if Tsubaki is literally in danger of being sacrificed to summon a demon or something, because those are apparently the stakes here. You tell me something helpful, I'm happy to look in the other direction when you make a break for it."

Giriko gave her a grim look like maybe he was thinking about it, but his jaw was set and Soul knew he wasn't going to talk.

"Kid," he said, queuing up the walkie talkie and somehow keeping his voice level despite the shock that Maka offering to make an off-the-books deal with a criminal engendered, "what's Justin doing?"

"Star," Kid said, and there was a cascade of crackling static as Black Star's mic came online in the middle of him apparently climbing around in another tree.

"Yeah, he's not doing anything," Black Star said. "Thought about climbing in the window, but seems dicey. He's just sitting in the living room, covered in blood. Got a fat ass steak over one eye, Giriko musta got him hella good, and he's drinking what I would conservatively term 'depression whiskey.' Altogether I'd say his status is 'sad sack'."

"Who the fuck are you guys," Giriko said, most of his piercings gone, hunched over the sink and looking like he really wished he could take back about half of his life.

"The bathroom is not the place for that discussion," Kid said, voice crisp even over a horrible speaker. "I'm sure you're accustomed to negotiating terms. Get cleaned up and we can talk."

"Did he just," Giriko said, all the anger and regret gone in a flash of slightly scandalized confusion.

"That's another one of those things you're better off not knowing," Soul said. "You wanna talk?"

"I _want_ to go home," Giriko said, and when he scrubbed a hand through his hair flakes of dried blood fell into the sink.

Maka snorted at him. "Home doesn't seem very safe right now, bro, and you aren't in any shape to keep fighting."

"You should see the other guy," Giriko said, swiping blood off of his face with a sideways grin that made Soul's skin crawl.

"Let's go downstairs, you're clean enough unless you're bleeding somewhere you haven't shown me," Maka said, face the perfect unimpressed picture of someone who knew they were the only adult in the room.

"Sure thing, we can braid each other's hair and talk about boys," Giriko said, and Soul decided that the man must be going into some form of shock.

/

"These are not the boys I wanted to talk about," Giriko said some time later, looking at the spread of crime scene photos Kid had fanned across their coffee table.

"I don't have time to try and bring you around the subtle way," Kid said, and he wasn't any happier about it than Giriko was. "And I'm not particularly interested in telling you who we are and what we're doing without you already knowing damn well that betraying us is not going to be in your best interests, so I took the liberty of having some of the blood you so considerately left here last time run through the home DNA database. Turns out you are, as the kids say, a very naughty boy."

Giriko grunted and stretched, still shirtless from when Maka had cut his blood-soaked shirt away, and Kid declined to look impressed at the amount of muscle rippling in front of him. "That's pretty fuckin' clear," he said once he'd settled back down, rubbing at the places on the bridge of his nose where his piercings normally sat. "So at this point we've really dispensed with the foreplay, yeah? It's just a matter of 'what do you want from me in exchange for not arresting me right now,' since I assume you're all FBI."

Kid stared at him in silence for a minute or so, glancing away only to check that Black Star, Soul, and Maka were still covering the exits.

"I want to know what's really going on in this neighborhood," he said at length, also declining to comment on whether or not Giriko's assumption was correct. "Not the gossip. I want to know what that woman at the end of the cul de sac is doing. I want to know who her gardener is and where he came from. I want to know what _your_ deal here is, and why you're fighting with your _partner_ ," and here the scare quotes came into play once more, though Giriko was not well-acquainted enough with Kid to realize how serious the implications of that gesture were.

Giriko's expression was what Kid decided to call a sullen glower. Out of sympathy and a desire to get the man to be cooperative, he stood up, waved at Soul to cover him, and retrieved a few of the good craft beers from the kitchen.

"I didn't want to end up in this situation either," he said, and passed Giriko one of the beers. "Let's do what we can to get out of it under good terms, all right?"

"There's never good terms for the guy on my side of this kinda deal," Giriko said, but he took the beer and drank probably half of it down in one long go.

"I have reason to believe that Medusa is -- _high priority,_ shall we say," Kid said carefully, the words chosen and spoken with as much precision as he could manage under pressure. "We may not have the resources to do much more than deal with her."

"Fair enough," Giriko said, and the look in his eyes was downright shrewd. "But you sound like you want me to prove to you that magic is real, agent, and I can't -- well, I can, kind of. Look here."

Kid took a swallow of beer and leaned forward, caught Black Star halfway to drawing a knife out of the corner of his eye, but Giriko was just peeling back one of the bandages Maka had applied to his forearm to reveal a cut that looked weeks old.

"That was down to the bone two hours ago," Kid said, because there wasn't much else to say about it, and Giriko gave him a self-satisfied smirk.

"Job comes with perks," he said, and set the bandage back in place so he could lean back and drink more beer.

"Fine," Kid said, unable to refute something he'd seen with his own eyes, even if it _didn't_ make sense, even if he'd cleaned a really egregious amount of blood out of the carpet not very long ago. "So tell me what's going on here."

"The lady's a witch, her gardener is the world's most useless werewolf, and I'm supposed to be part of her staff," Giriko said, as if none of this information could be considered strange or controversial.

"Supposed to be," Kid repeated, and Giriko shrugged, grinned, drank the rest of his beer and waved at Soul for another.

"I'm sure your boy over there can back me up on this," Giriko said, and then made a face when Soul handed him some kind of blue sports drink instead of more alcohol. "Medusa's got a sister. They're in this business deep, the crime families are all scared shitless of them. So one day her sister disinvites her from the cool kids table, right? They're no longer buddies. Puts us in a bit of a pickle, ya dig? Who am I supposed to be taking orders from, how much danger am I in at any given moment, is Medusa going to kill us all and then go after her sister, who knows? I sure's hell don't. Got conflicting sets of orders, Justin doesn't know what to do except he knows he doesn't want to do what _I_ wanna do, everything's a mess."

Black Star didn't move, because he knew better than to leave an escape route, but that didn't stop him from asking, very loudly, "And are you familiar with their east coast operations?"

Giriko, who was not actually as dumb as he looked, had the good grace to look a little nervous. "I had nothing to do with that, first of all," he said, "and usually not really, because it's not information that's usually important to me doing my job here. Now that Medusa and her sister ain't talking, we don't hear anything unless Arachne contacts us personally, which she's only done once since it happened." He grimaced. "That was orders to take out Medusa at the first viable opportunity, and let me tell you, there have not been any opportunities that wouldn't've got us killed. I don't even wanna do it, mostly because if we fuck up she'll skin us alive, but Justin's understandably not into the consequences of disobeying Arachne, either."

"This is what's usually called a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation," Black Star said, and couldn't quite keep an affected twang out of his voice. "I've had some experience with those lately."

Soul snorted. "Pretty sure we all have."

Giriko sighed and drank his sports drink, seemingly for lack of anything better to do. "I just want out of this damn business," he said. "If you can get me and Justin out of here or at least give us a clean escape route, I'll do what I can."

Kid sat back, had a little more beer, considered his options and just how much Marie would let him get away with. "Up to you, I suppose," he said eventually. "Protective custody until things are taken care of is an option, but that would mean jail time. Otherwise --"

"I know the drill," Giriko said before Kid had to figure out how to say 'we'll create a distraction for you to use as an escape opportunity' in a way that wouldn't get him in trouble later, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. "And if you guys need other proof, full moon's coming up. Keep an eye on the gardener if you're up to the task, and you'll see some shit."

"I'll take that under advisement," Kid said, fully intending to do whatever was necessary to do exactly that -- he did _not_ like anything about the very real possibility at this point that witches, werewolves, and other sundry nonsense he'd been happily attributing to Black Star's conspiracy theorist craziness might actually be _real things_.

"You do that," Giriko said, and looked around the room at the others, who were still guarding the exits. "You guys gonna let me go home?"

"Can't say I want to," Maka said from her position by the front door.

Kid shrugged. "We can't detain you without playing our hand, and I need to save that for the big bad down the street," he said. "But let's be clear: if anything happens that makes me suspect you tried something, you're gonna be in jail long enough to see the sun go out."

"I'm not an idiot," Giriko said, back to the snapping anger he'd been seething with in the bathroom. "If I agree to drag Justin over here for three square meals and movie night, is that enough?"

"You miss a meal, I'm phoning home," Kid said, and it was a stupid idea but it'd work well enough, he guessed.

"Okay, _Dad,_ " Giriko drawled; Black Star busted out laughing and Soul didn't bother stifling his snickers. "Are y'all ever gonna tell me why you're here? Why _he_ ," and he pointed at Black Star, "is here, of all damn places?"

"Only if you're very unlucky," Kid said, and the flat stare he gave Giriko wiped the grin off the man's face. "If you breathe a word of it, I won't bother phoning home. I'll just send him after you, and no one will ever know what happened."

"Now _that's_ the man I fell in love with," Black Star said, far too loudly for Kid's nerves, and not even that managed to completely restore color to Giriko's complexion.

Kid rubbed his temples. "Go home," he said, and reached for his beer. "Good luck convincing Justin to come over for pancakes. If you don't, that will _also_ be grounds for me to phone home, because it'll mean he knows and isn't cooperating."

Giriko gave him a slightly rattled, very unfriendly look. "You don't have to tell me," he said, and pushed himself to his feet. "We'll be here." He turned to Maka and gave her an exaggerated bow. "Thanks for the medical attention, even though I didn't need it as bad as you thought."

Just the way she was holding her gun was threat enough, so Maka didn't bother glaring. "Lost blood is lost blood," she said. "Healing takes energy. You gonna be able to walk tomorrow?"

Giriko gave her a shit-eating grin. "For pancakes, I'd walk outta my grave," he said, and headed for the back door because apparently no one in this damn neighborhood knew how to act like a sane human. He fist bumped Black Star on his way out the back door and then was gone, vaulting over the back fence with ridiculous ease.

"Great," Soul said, shoulders slumping as he holstered his weapon. "I hate this."

/

He hated it more the next day when Giriko and Justin showed up for brunch wearing a lot of odd bruises and self-satisfied smirks. Justin at least was more low-key about it, content to introduce himself and sit down at the table to make small talk with Kid while Giriko leaned against the wall and gave everything a hungry grin.

"I'll show you the tapes later," Star stage-whispered to him in the kitchen when he was flipping pancakes and Soul was making whipped cream. "Shit could make a nun blush. It's why I convinced Kid to let them get away with missing breakfast."

"Please never speak to me again," Soul said, debating whether or not he could suffocate himself by faceplanting into the whipped cream.

Brunch was at least free of whipped cream and pancake genitalia, and once everyone had eaten they proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon yelling at each other about barbeque. At least, Soul figured, they had settled on pork over beef; at least all they had to do on that front was take a cleaver to an _entire half pig_ because Giriko wouldn't hear of any other way to buy pork that was destined for the BBQ pit.

Except that had meant Giriko with a _cleaver_ , and then _Black Star_ with a cleaver, and somehow that was how Kid ended up doing the butchering, wielding the blade with a precision that had even Justin, who had remained silent and out of the way, raising his eyebrows.

And then there had been _hours_ of yelling about sauce and dry rubs and marinades and cooking methods, and at the end of the day Soul was just glad that Black Star and Giriko had not actually put to the test which one of them would win in a fight. They had gone head to head over the sauce, squabbling over ingredients and style and whether or not molasses was legitimately allowed in barbeque, but in the end their fighting had resulted in a sauce that was, as Giriko put it, 'so good you'll slap your _momma_.'

Dry rub only. Cook it all day. Justin picked the wood for the smoker and wouldn't talk about it. They rolled up to the neighborhood barbeque the next day with an ancient smoker Giriko had bolted to a trailer and set it down on the grassy area next to the pond, under one of several canopies that had been provided. Soul set up a crock of sauce and Black Star ran over with tray after tray of freshly-baked buns and they watched their neighbors filter in with, on Soul's end at least, some trepidation. For Black Star, it was easier; he'd met very few of them face to face and had only been allowed to attend because if he didn't it would be tantamount to a social declaration of war. All the same, he'd had to promise to keep his shirt on and they had both brought out the aviators because, as Kid pointed out, they needed all the help they could get with seeming normal.

Soul watched as a few other canopies were claimed, some for more barbeque and others for baked goods, and somehow managed thanks to the aviators to keep a straight face whenever Giriko looked at him and he remembered the bruises and then the _audio clips_ Black Star had subjected him to when he refused to watch the videos. Thankfully Free wandered over before he had too much time to dwell on that horror, and somehow Soul had forgotten that he was big enough to make Giriko seem nearly _average_. Soul had a sandwich ready for him before he even got there purely out of self-defense.

"Thanks," Free said, giving him a huge smile as he took an equally massive bite out of the sandwich and made a positively indecent noise.

" _Damn_ ," he said, staring at the sandwich like it'd cured world hunger. "Giriko pulls good pork, but this is really something else. New sauce?"

"Star and I made it," Soul said, unable to keep from smiling and puffing up a bit with pride.

" _And_ the buns!" Star yelled from where he was jockeying with Giriko for possession of the plastic claws they were using to shred the meat. "This culture was dubbed Mackaylekenzee, and she died for this barbeque. Respect."

Free gave them a thumbs up that Soul managed to return without making a face or anything and wandered off, leaving Soul to drop into one of the lawn chairs they'd set up and try to work some of the tension out of his shoulders.

"He was scary to start with, but it's way worse once you know," Giriko said from his position by the smoker. "Try not to freak out, he can smell fear."

"I'm not freaking out," Soul muttered to the tray of shredded pork in front of him, and managed to hand several people sandwiches before he caught sight of someone waving at him from across the field.

"You should take that," Star said from _immediately behind him_ , and Soul nearly tried to punch him out before realizing that that was not the appropriate response to the situation.

"Don't have to tell me twice," he said instead, and tried to ignore the apron Star was wearing that said RAISE THE STEAKS as he took the plate Star was pressing on him and exited their booth to head for the person who'd been waving at him, a person that turned out to be Maka.

"Hey," she said once he pushed his way over, and turned him around to face the man occupying the canopy she was standing in front of. He was of moderately tall build, long blond hair, broad shoulders for his height Soul guessed -- but compared to Giriko or Free he looked practically _willowy_. "Soul, this is Mifune, your next door neighbor."

"We've met," Soul said, managing another friendly smile and a handshake. Problem was, now he was more than half convinced that all of his neighbors were some form of monster, and the strength of Mifune's grip and the calluses on his hand did nothing to dissuade him from this belief. "Nice to see you again."

"The pleasure is mine," Mifune said in a low, pleased rumble like maybe he was amused, and Soul caught the edge of a tattoo across his left pectoral where the tank top he was wearing had shifted a bit, something Japanese if he had to guess. "Please, have some baked beans. Kilik and the twins made the potato salad, but the beans are all Angela's work." He gave Soul a smile that was so at ease that Soul kind of hated him for a second, because he couldn't remember the last time he'd even been able to fake that kind of calm. "I'd be happy to trade you some for one of those apparently incredible sandwiches you're peddling."

"Oh, right," Soul said, and handed him the sandwich he'd been carrying in exchange for a plate of baked beans and potato salad that were both, honestly, worth dying for. "Please convey my compliments to the chefs."

"Of course," Mifune said, somehow managing to eat a sloppy barbeque sandwich with _precision_. "I wanted to talk to the both of you, anyway. Kilik and I -- " and he gestured with his chin to a dark, dreadlocked man overseeing something that the older children were doing, "were concerned about the racket we heard the other night. We thought you might need some help dealing with stray dogs. They're a bit of a problem around here, unfortunately, and the officials can't seem to keep up with them."

Soul paused mid-chew, mouth full of smoked beans and bacon, and tried to evaluate just what the fuck was going on.

Maka, thankfully, had a better grasp on the situation, or at least a better ability to roll with weird punches. "Thanks, Mifune," she said with a sunny smile that was probably the most out of character thing Soul had seen so far. "I think we're okay for now, but to tell you the truth we might need your help soon."

"Please don't hesitate to give us a call," Mifune said, and not even the ridiculous straw hat he had on could detract from the gravitas in his voice, the _intent_ , as he handed Soul and Maka both slips of paper with his number on them. "I've also had some trouble with snakes recently, of all things."

"I've been hearing that," Soul said, forcing down another forkful of food. "Got any suggestions for dealing with them?"

"Call me," Mifune said, and Soul had seen hardened criminals with eyes less dangerous.

Soul looked at Maka, who gave him an infinitesimal shrug, and then a racket from the general vicinity of Kilik and the kids drew everyone's attention.

"You should go see them," Mifune said, sounding indulgent and totally as though he hadn't just been insinuating he was down for murder. "They've been practicing."

"We'd love to," Maka said, and grabbed Soul's arm before he could say anything, let alone protest. He stumbled after her to the little hill that led down towards the community pond and found Kilik's twins there, bleach-blond hair stark against their dark skin and both whooping as they tapped manically on a tablet that seemed to be controlling --

"Are those _chickens,_ " Soul said, squinting, unable to put any other word to what were obviously not living animals.

Someone might have answered him, but a flurry of clicks accompanied by nerf darts interrupted. Each one hit a fake chicken square in the head, and off to his right Soul noticed a young girl in a lizard hat who also happened to be holding what appeared to be a very heavily modified nerf rifle.

"I win!" she yelled, and the twins sighed heavily. "Fire, get me a sandwich!"

One of the twins went, leaving the other poking despondently at the tablet. "It's not fair," he said in Soul's general direction. "Girl's too good. Dunno what her dad's teaching her, but it's not _fair,_ she's hardly ten."

"What're the chickens," Soul asked around a mouthful of food, and after a minute the boy stopped tapping and looked up at him.

"Drones," he said, as if that made everything make sense. "Just drones that we made little Minecraft chicken bodies for. That part was easy, hard part's been teaching them how to not run into everything without us driving."

Soul blinked, dredged up words. "If it makes you feel better, I know legit professionals having the same problem," he said. "Though they aren't turning the drones into chickens."

The teenager shrugged. "That's their problem," he said. "Adults forget how to have fun."

"I've noticed," Soul said, and then turned when Maka called out to the girl.

"Come here, Angela, let me see your gun," she said, and the girl flounced over with a sunny smile to present her weapon.

"Good lord," Soul said as he watched Maka disassemble part of the gun. "Did you guys do this, too?"

The boy shrugged. "Yeah, a long time ago. We've got some that are much better now. They leave _marks_."

" _Really,_ " Maka said, examining the gun barrel with a speculative cast to her expression.

"Yeah," the kid said, then: "Hey, the ice cream guys said that if I got you to go over there they'd give us free dessert. Wanna do me a favor?"

"Did they say what they wanted?" Soul asked, in a display of misplaced optimism.

"Nope," the kid said. "You going?"

"Fine," Soul said, and got Maka to stop taking apart Angela's nerf gun so they could head for the resident creepy ice cream truck, which had set up on the curb by the event as if anything about this neighborhood could be considered normal.

He was greeted by a man with his hair in a short, spiky man-bun and sunglasses nearly as ridiculous as Soul's own, a man who hardly even said anything to him before passing him some kind of raspberry sherbet thing in a plastic cone and then handing Maka a fudge pop after a judicious moment's stare.

"Um," Maka said, but that was apparently all they were getting, because even as she said it the guy leaned back into the truck and shut the window.

"This is the same truck that gave Kid the ice cream sandwich that apparently told him you were supposed to be assisting," Soul said, as if that wasn't obvious, and Maka gave him a killing glare.

"How did you make it this far without learning when to keep your damn mouth shut," she said, and grabbed him yet again so she could haul him off towards where Black Star was still serving up pulled pork with Giriko. "I don't like this. I haven't seen Tsubaki in two days, and that's about twelve hours longer than we usually go without seeing each other. Eat your ice cream, maybe it'll explain."

"Let's go find Kid while I work on that," Soul said, and started trying to eat a solid brick of fake raspberry sherbet without destroying every nerve ending in his teeth in the process.

"He's over by Kilik," Maka said, and the look she gave him made it pretty clear that she'd have pulled out a knife and cut the ice cream in half if they hadn't been in a public setting and was still considering doing so.

Soul caught himself grinning into the ice cream over that thought, and, as he followed her towards Kid, reflected that perhaps he hadn't _really_ ever gotten over her. Not that now was the _time_ , they had way too much going on for him to be getting distracted, but --

"Oh, they're unbelievable, I told them to work on a more cultured hobby and now, because they're _ridiculous_ , they're making bread that's so good I can't even be angry, except the whole house is starting to smell like _yeast_ ," Kid was saying when they got close enough for Soul to start paying more attention to Kid than to his inner monologue regarding a crush he may or may not have on Maka.

"I'm glad to know you enjoy our new vocation, _dear_ ," Soul said, and mentally prepared himself for a public game of gay chicken that he really hoped wasn't going to end with finger-shaped bruises on his ass. "I can't wait for you to try the cheese we're working on."

Kilik shook his hand when he was done laughing, then nodded in the direction of the booth where Black Star and Giriko were still serving barbeque to a statuesque blonde. "Looks like you guys made it so good that Free went and told Medusa," he said, and though his tone and expression were light, there was a gleam in his eyes that most certainly was _not_. "Better be careful, she'll steal your recipe and sell it." His tablet pinged at him, and he took a moment to type in a line of programming that Soul couldn't follow. "Anyway, Mifune tells me you guys might be having some -- vermin troubles. Please, _do not hesitate_ to call me if you need some assistance. Mifune isn't always available -- taking care of his daughter, you know, she's a handful like all prodigies are -- but I usually am, and I have some experience in the area."

Soul found himself in a truly bizarre position: one where he was sharing a look with Kid out of the corner of his eye from behind his aviators, one where they both shrugged even so slightly and agreed without words that neither of them had any idea what the hell was going on.

"Does that apply to me, too?" Maka asked, her affected expression of hopeful distress convincing enough that it was a bit unnerving.

Kilik raised his eyebrows. "Miss Albarn, of course," he said with an easy smile. "I just didn't think you'd be prone to such issues, that's all. If you need assistance, then by all means."

"I may hold you to it," Maka said, and took a bite of her ice cream that was entirely too deliberate for Soul's comfort.

He was still trying to eat his way through his sherbet when Mifune appeared seemingly from nowhere, looking cross.

Kilik looked away from where he'd been talking to Kid about the twins and their drones and gave Mifune a sympathetic look. "Medusa come by your stand?"

"That woman is a disgrace both as a PTA president and as a parent," Mifune said, arms crossed and shoulders tight and if Soul had been unsettled by the way Giriko and Justin both made him feel like he was in a dangerous situation just by being near them, Mifune when he looked like this made his stomach try to plunge straight into the center of the planet, stupid straw hat or no.

"I know," Kilik said, tapping at something again. "But you know my opinions on the kind of blackmail scheme she's got set up to make sure she keeps getting elected. It's part of why I home-school the twins."

Soul couldn't help but tilt his head a little. "PTA president? _Medusa?_ " They might as well tell him that Black Star had gone off to join a monastery.

"Unfortunately yes," Mifune said with a sigh that was more hatred than regret. "She is a blight upon this institution, she doesn't even have a child attending school here any more and she will _not_ relinquish power. I want to start programs to get these children resources they would _unquestionably_ benefit from, and she's got everyone blackmailed into taking her side!"

" _And_ buying her sex toys," Kilik said, still without looking up.

"She is a lewd and selfish woman, and I _will_ have her place on the PTA," Mifune pronounced with finality, and all Soul could do was nod and try not to give himself brain freeze from eating ice cream too fast because Maka was glaring at him.

"Soul, don't you think we should go make sure that Star and Giriko haven't killed each other in a wolverine duel with those claw things?" Maka asked after a minute, when it became clear that Mifune, Kilik, and Kid were now all involved in programming whatever it was that Kilik had up on his tablet.

"Sure," Soul said, and let her grab his forearm again as if he needed leading. "I'm almost done with this ice cream, anyway."

Their little canopy was almost a disappointment when they got there; Star had shredded most of the necessary meat, and Giriko and Justin were asleep in a pair of folding chairs, propped against each other and snoring faintly.

"I took a bunch of pictures, and not just because Kid needs references for that super secret romance novel he's writing about them," Black Star said when they got close, grinning like he'd won the lottery. "Always wise to have blackmail material on everyone you can, right?"

"God, they look like a pair of buff kittens," Maka said, visibly torn between laughing herself to death and having an allergic reaction to a pair of guys like Giriko and Justin being _cute_ in any context.

"Shockingly, I don't think they'd been getting much sleep till just recently," Black Star said, and took a bite of the sandwich he'd been making when they arrived. "This stuff's pretty good, considering."

"Considering?" Soul asked, raising an eyebrow and maybe dreading the answer a little.

Star shrugged. "Well, it's no pizza bites with ranch," he said, and Soul's stomach did something awful at the thought.

"Soul," Maka said, and swung herself onto the part of the utility table not hosting sandwiches. "The ice cream?"

"You've always been so bad at waiting," he grumbled, but with some effort and with Black Star making suggestive comments at his use of his tongue, Soul managed to get the gumball out of the bottom of the cone. He looked at it for a minute, held between thumb and forefinger, and at last gave up and just bit it.

"Soul -- "

Maka's concern was, thankfully, misplaced. The gumball cracked in half, and Soul pulled a slip of paper out of it.

"It's a fortune cookie fortune," he said, turning it over in his hands, eyes picking out lottery numbers and a little 'learn Chinese' header.

"What's the fortune?" Black Star said, invading his space in an instant to peer over his shoulder.

Soul turned the thing over. "It says -- 'a very attractive person has a message for you'," he read, and made a face. "The hell does that mean?"

Star's hand slid over his hip, and it took everything Soul had not to grab him and throw him across the field. "I got a message for you, if you catch my drift, _lover_ ," he said, and Soul could _feel_ how close he was to losing the fight against insane laughter at his own joke.

"Get off me," Soul said, rolling his eyes and shrugging Black Star off his back. "Maka, what's yours say?"

She was in the process of licking the popsicle stick clean -- Soul might have averted his eyes or he might not, but he'd never say which -- but ultimately she just shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "They just gave me a free fudgesicle, which Papa always used to -- oh, no."

"I don't like it when you say that," Soul said, and even Black Star had dropped his act to scan their surroundings with a kind of considering precision that made Soul remember with uncomfortable clarity that the man was, if debatably a ninja, at the very least a hardened career criminal.

Maka slid off the table and ducked behind him, looking murderous and terrified all at once and Soul was still processing the fact that she was really only up to his collarbone when she hissed, "My _father_ is here," and all of his blood turned to ice.

"Where," he said, and then, "Does he have a shotgun?"

"Why would he have a _shotgun_ ," Black Star asked, looking much too excited about this possibility for Soul's peace of mind.

"There was an incident," Soul said, eyes still roving the crowd, but then --

"We have to hide," he said, except he was frozen in place by pure, undiluted panic. "My _brother_ is here, too."

"It's not like our cover was keeping us alive or anything," Black Star said philosophically, and then Spirit Albarn noticed his daughter and came bounding towards them.


	6. check the taco hot pockets box

Spirit, thankfully, had some kind of functioning brain in his head when he felt like it, and did not proceed to blow their cover or Soul's head off. He just greeted his daughter with the overwhelmingly effusive affection Soul had become accustomed to and acted like he'd never met anyone else nearby in his life.

That really should have been Soul's first clue that something was amiss.

The second clue was impossible to overlook, because it involved Soul's _own brother_ wandering over, putting a hand on Spirit's shoulder that was _way_ too convincingly possessive, and pretending like he'd never seen Soul before in his entire life.

"Mr. Albarn, maybe we should catch up somewhere more private," Soul had said, his spirit possibly leaving his body, hoping desperately that Spirit would be merciful enough to agree.

Forty-five minutes later they were all staring at each other in Soul's living room -- even Giriko and Justin, who'd let Spirit bully them into attending with a minimum of fuss for reasons that Soul still couldn't decipher but which might have been related to the badge he'd flashed too quickly for Soul to identify it.

"I just need you to _cooperate_ , Maka," Spirit was saying, and Soul sighed, let his chin drop towards his chest and waited for the explosion.

"You'll explain to all of us or you can _go away_ , Papa," Maka said, and Spirit positively _wilted_.

"I can't just explain a top secret mission in front of _criminals_ ," he said, pleading, and Soul managed to just make a face at Black Star, sitting immediately on his right, instead of getting himself into trouble by making a comment about professionalism. "Some of this information is _sensitive_ , this is why i wanted to speak to you all individually."

"We're cooperating," Justin -- of all people -- said, voice a smooth monotone, something edged in the soft blue of his eyes. "And Giriko and I already know that you're not going to let us leave this house now that you've got us and something is obviously going on, so don't worry on _our_ account, agent."

"You just do not need to be involved," Spirit said, back to haughty now that he wasn't trying to talk his daughter into something she didn't want to do.

Kid, on Soul's left, allowed himself one of his distinctive 'I hate that I feel like I need to do this' sighs, and said, "Unfortunately, I don't think we have the luxury of picking and choosing our allies, Agent Albarn. Black Star has been entirely -- _cooperative_ , and these two have given me no reason to think they won't do the same." His pale eyes slanted towards Giriko, a look that made the man sit up straighter. "They have specifically expressed a desire to be free of their life of crime, anyway, so perhaps we can give them the benefit of the doubt, no?"

Spirit looked less than pleased.

"I can draw you plans of Medusa's house," Justin offered, still sounding bored. "Including the parts that aren't supposed to be there and a general idea of her security, as much as I'm capable of knowing it exists. You might need to talk to, let's say, Kim about the magical parts. I only know that they're there."

"I can take Free out," Giriko added, and everyone in the room who knew who Free _was_ turned to give him looks that spanned a range from incredulous to -- actually, Soul decided he didn't really want to put words to the weird tint Justin's eyes got. "Werewolves are scary and all, but I can handle him if I need to."

"You don't need to get yourself killed fighting a werewolf just to prove a point," Justin said, and, yeah, Soul hadn't thought that far, but that _was_ a good point, actually.

Kid sighed again at the word 'werewolf' but it was starting to sound like the way Maka said she thought that Black Star's theories were insane, as if they just hated that this had become their reality.

"Can my call sign be honey badger?" Black Star asked while everyone was still staring at Giriko, effectively ruining whatever weird moment they'd been having.

"Who said you were involved," Spirit said, running a hand through his still shockingly red hair. "Who said we were doing the kind of operation here that involved _call signs_."

"Papa," Maka said again, and Spirit made a defeated noise.

"Hey," Soul said before Spirit could get started on some kind of lengthy tangent, "why the hell is my brother here, and why isn't he _here?_ "

" _Agent Evans_ ," Spirit said with ridiculously affected dignity, "is talking to your neighbors to see if any of them are suitable for this operation. He is here because he is my partner, and we were sent to deal with this situation because we are the two agents most suited to such a difficult task."

Soul stared at him for a long minute, debating whether or not to point out that that very obviously meant that the neighborhood was even weirder than he'd thought because that meant that _somebody_ was already working a long-term mission here, probably. Or maybe, in Kim's case, she was just somehow obligated, assuming she was in fact a _real_ witch and not just a nice girl selling cute candles on Etsy that happened to include clary sage.

"Look," he said after discarding a lot of really unhelpful responses that would have resulted in the shotgun's reappearance in his life, "this isn’t getting us anywhere. Maybe you should just tell us all what you're doing here, what department you're with, what's going on, something helpful?"

Spirit dragged one hand across his face, and turned back to Justin and Giriko. "You two consent to being held under guard for the duration?"

Giriko raised the hand that wasn't draped across the back of the loveseat and, conveniently, behind Justin. "Scout's honor," he said. "I won't tell the bad lady about your plans."

Justin looked at Giriko, looked at Spirit, and shrugged ever so slightly. "If we stick with you we at least have a chance of survival," he said, as if that settled things, and Spirit frowned at them both for at least thirty solid seconds before nodding.

"Fine," he said, hands deep in the pockets of his otherwise impeccable suit jacket. "We had an agent working undercover, and she missed her check-in. Her contacts have also failed to be in touch with us, and we have no communications intercepts to lead us to believe that things are going well. As such, we were dispatched with all possible haste to conduct, as we saw fit, first a recon operation and then a rescue if we deemed it necessary."

"My father must really trust you," Kid said, and Soul was a little startled to see him sitting slouched, arms crossed, sulking. "So you two are, what -- Mulder and Mulder?"

"This is no laughing matter," Spirit said, and it was hard to say if he looked so affronted because of what Kid had said or because his angry father look wasn't working on him. "We have a woman who may be dead, regardless of whether or not you believe in witches."

"Papa, are you talking about _Tsubaki_ ," Maka said, and Soul had never heard fear in her voice before, at least not that was related to anything more than a term paper. It made his stomach turn.

"Yes, dear," Spirit said with unexpected gentleness. "I'm sorry to break it to you like this. She was working undercover for us and we've lost contact. We need to put together a plan, and we need to get some eyes on the inside of Medusa's house regardless of whether or not this man can draw us a map."

"Hey, daddy-o," Black Star said before Maka could respond and, more importantly, before Spirit could go in for a hug, and Maka gave him a grateful look. "I'm glad that the agency that knows what's up is finally here. _You'll_ believe me when I tell you that werewolves and Arachne killed my family, right? And while I've got you here, is it true that the reason we have fossils is actually because aliens used Earth as a pet cemetery?"

"I wouldn't rule out Arachne using werewolves to murder a crime family and usurp their connections," Spirit said, and: "Also, I'm not allowed to comment on the fossils. Take it up with your fake boyfriend's father."

"Will fucking do," Star said, and reached around Soul to ruffle Kid's hair. "When are you finally introducing me to your parents, baby?"

"If you wish to keep that hand attached, stop touching me," Kid said, and Soul couldn't decide if he was more surprised or relieved that Black Star chose that moment to listen and return his hands to his own personal space, at least for a few seconds. Mercifully, any further descent into madness was interrupted by Spirit's phone, which began blaring "Miss New Booty" at an impressive volume.

Spirit didn't even have the good grace to look embarrassed. He answered his phone, spent a solid couple minutes listening to whoever was on the other end and making various noises of assent, and ended the call without having given much of anything away in the process.

"All right," he said, with a much firmer tone than he'd managed earlier. "We really do need to talk. Is there anywhere in this house that's more secure?"

"Basement," Black Star said, already on his feet, already dragging Kid along, already _way_ too excited. "I sweep it for bugs every day and everything."

" _What,_ " Kid said as he disappeared down the stairs and left the rest of them blinking in sudden silence.

Soul stood up and scrubbed a sheepish hand through his hair, mostly in hopes of keeping anybody from asking questions he didn't feel like answering. "Shall we?"

Spirit gave him an unamused look. "I don't suppose we have much choice," he said, and shifted his stare to Justin and Giriko. "You two, get moving. We'll follow after."

They stood with a minimum of sulking, Giriko growling and Justin pushing him along, and Soul gave up on trying to talk to Spirit so he could hustle his way over to the stairs ahead of them.

"I have no intention of getting caught in the traffic jam you guys are about to create on the stairs," he said when all four of the other people in the room looked at him like he'd lost his damn mind. "There are things in that basement that no sane man can look upon without going a little mad, and I don't care to fall down the stairs because somebody was too busy going insane to keep walking."

"Your basement is not host to the elder gods, calm down," Maka said from somewhere behind him, but Maka didn't _know_. Soul made it to the basement well ahead of everyone else and --

"Hey, can you hit the lights," Black Star yelled from his position on -- oh _god_ , he'd gotten another couch somehow, and this one looked like a thousand Lisa Frank kittens had died to provide its upholstery. Kid, probably because it was pretty obvious that the insanity radiating from that couch was catching, had sat elsewhere, although Soul had to admit that the zebra shag couch wasn't much better.

"Hit what lights," Soul said, sidestepping away from the base of the stairs so he didn't get caught in the ensuing avalanche when Giriko entered the room and went blind.

Star just pointed, terrifying grin firmly in place, and Soul glanced to the side to see what appeared to be a _virulently_ green silicone ass, mounted to the wall.

"You're fucking with me," he said, unable to look away and equally unable to comprehend what he was staring at.

While Soul was staring, Giriko reached the bottom of the stairs and did _not_ go blind or insane; rather, he turned to see what Soul was looking at and proceeded to guffaw, yell, "Hey, I have one of these too!" and then push past Soul so he could give the thing a resounding smack on the left cheek.

It quivered and lit up, and Soul found himself questioning his life and the nature of reality all over again.

"It must be one of the world's great miracles that you and I have lived together as long as we have without destroying a building or each other," Justin said, following Giriko at a more sedate pace. "You really weren't kidding about this room, Evans."

" _That_ _reminds me_ ," Soul said as Spirit and Maka made their way in as well. "Why the hell is my brother _actually_ here?"

"It’s not that hard to understand that he works with me," Spirit said, staring at the room's contents as if each individual thing were more offensive to his sensibilities than the last.

"And what is it, exactly, that you do _do_ ," Soul snapped, and Maka gave him a quelling look that was, nonetheless, still just as confused as he was. "Who do you work for? What is the damn meaning of this?"

"I told you," Spirit said, ultimately opting not to sit at all, which was probably wise.

"Pardon me," Giriko said, having thrown himself on the Lisa Frank couch next to Black Star and making the words sound more insulting than Soul would have believed possible, "but you ain't told us _shit_ , sir."

"He isn't gonna," Star said, hands linked behind his head and clearly with no fucks to give. "He works for The Man and he's not gonna tell us anything. He's here to get his agent back and capture himself a witch so they can work some more on that whole fake moon thing they've got going on."

"I thought they were trying to weaponize werewolves," Kid said from where he'd set his face in his hands.

"They're trying to do a lot, bro," Black Star replied, and Spirit rolled his eyes so dramatically that everyone shut up and looked at him.

"I will tell you what I _can_ ," he said, "mostly because you need to know some things before we get into this situation. I work for a government agency that deals with the supernatural. We have _rules_ about what information we can pass along that I am not inclined to break."

"If by _deals with_ you mean _weaponizes,"_ Star interrupted, andgraced Spirit with a cheeky grin when he was glared at.

"While we prefer to learn about and work with these beings peacefully, it should come as no surprise that many of them are hostile and require their own brand of law enforcement," Spirit continued once he'd decided that Black Star was done for the moment. "For example, whatever it was that got Star Clan was a nasty piece of work, and we're doing our best to trace it back to its source."

"Arachne did it, I _told_ you this," Black Star said, and despite the fact that this wasn't news, Soul was still a little surprised to see that the man still seemed honestly angry about it when he'd never really given the impression that he'd been all that attached to his family.

Spirit sighed. "Prosecuting -- or executing -- her will require proof, you know this. We're working on it."

"So Giriko wasn't just making that up," Justin said, looking speculative while Black Star glowered. "Can I see your tattoos?"

Star gave him a sidelong look that wasn't all that friendly, but in the end it was someone asking him to take his shirt off and flex, which was something that Soul suspected Black Star would rise from the dead to do.

" _No_ ," Spirit said, and whatever pretense of being an authority figure he'd had going faded into something more like a weary teacher. "Do that later. Soul, your brother was recruited a few years ago, but he chose not to tell you or the rest of your family. It's easier for us if it can be done that way, though not really all that common. Still, this is top-secret, dangerous stuff, so everything is as secretive as we can make it."

"Papa," Maka said, sounding maybe a little _hurt_ , and Spirit wasn't the only one looking like he kind of wanted to hug her.

"I'm sorry, Maka," Spirit said. "I wanted to tell you, but -- and you wouldn't have believed me, anyway, not without proof I couldn't give you."

She sighed. "I suppose you're right." Another sigh, a drumming of fingers on her arms where she had them crossed, and a shrug. "Well, I guess I'll come out of this a believer if what everyone seems to be saying is true. What's the plan?"

Spirit cleared his throat. "Well, Wes has spoken to your neighbors. Mifune would like to assist but he largely can't at this point, at least not unless there's an emergency. Kilik has volunteered his children's services; it seems they have several drones that may prove extremely useful, along with what I'm led to believe is a veritable armory full of modified nerf guns. One of your other neighbors is a minor witch, a healer, and her partner is a nurse, so they have volunteered what assistance they can as a matter of course."

"Tell Kim we're gonna need something to undo all the mental scarring," Soul muttered, and was rewarded with a snort from Maka that meant she was trying not to laugh along with a warning glare from her father and nearly identically horrible, pointed grins from Giriko and Black Star.

"Son, if the contents of this room are your idea of 'mentally scarring,' may you never see worse," Spirit said, and Soul bristled at the patronizing undertone but managed to keep himself under control long enough for Spirit to turn back to the room at large. "Anyway. Wes is mapping the neighborhood but it's never too early to start planning, and we are going to need a good plan if everybody wants to get out of this in one piece. Medusa isn't as big a threat as her sister, but that doesn’t make her harmless. Witches like her tend to play nice right up until they murder you -- or you insult their fashion choices."

"Kilik's kids have this roomba army," Black Star said, sitting forward and way more jazzed about cleaning robots than Soul would ever have expected. "They strap _knives_ to them sometimes and have _jousting matches_."

Spirit blinked at him; _everyone_ blinked at him. "Are you suggesting we -- _actually_ ," Spirit said, shifting from incredulous to speculative way too quickly for Soul's comfort.

"Come _on_ ," Star said, thwacking his fist into his other palm. "Those things can hide under furniture, tell me they wouldn't make perfect spies."

Even Giriko was looking at him like he was a hopeless kind of crazy. "Dude," he said, and Star turned to face him, chest puffing out and ready to fight over roombas of _all things._ "I'm just saying that the billion stupid drones those kids have would be way more useful if you want to do surveillance."

Giriko was still staring down Black Star when Justin raised an eyebrow at Spirit. "But why would you need to do surveillance, anyway," he said, voice almost drawling. "That ice cream truck should really have provided you with most of what you need, and probably a lot of stuff you wish you hadn't had to sit through besides."

Something next to Spirit's eye twitched. "Yes," he said, voice a little less than composed. "The footage we got from you was especially _elucidating_."

That got him a smile from Justin that would haunt Soul's dreams and no further comment.

Spirit pinched the bridge of his nose and shifted his eyes a few feet to the side. "Black Star," he said. "Do you happen to have plans of Medusa's house on hand?"

"Freezer," Star replied without looking away from Giriko. "Check the taco hot pockets box."

" _Sick_ ," Maka said, but that was all she had time for before Kid interrupted.

"I can't say I'm surprised at this point," he said to the disco ball hanging from the ceiling, having upgraded from head-in-his-hands disbelief to guess-this-is-my-life-now staring, "but _why the hell_ have you got plans of Medusa's house? What part of _undercover witness protection_ did you not comprehend?"

"I didn't blow our cover," Black Star said with unexpected gravitas, finally turning away from Giriko to address Kid as directly as one could address a man staring at the ceiling. "To tell you the truth I was expecting to have to go after her, because there's no way she wouldn't go after _me_ the instant she realized who I was, which she did, by the way, just this afternoon. We may not have much time."

"We don't _anyway_ ," Spirit said, having unearthed a dizzying array of hot pocket flavors before finding the box Black Star had indicated. "It's a full moon tomorrow night, and if she's got Tsubaki and plans to do anything particularly nasty to her, it'll be then." With an expression of profound distaste he reached into the box and produced a thick sheaf of folder paper that turned out to be actual blueprints. "Care to tell me how you got these?"

"Can't say I do," Star said, looking only a _little_ smug. "I promise I didn't leave any clues behind."

"Considering the file of dirt we have on you that we can't prove, I wouldn't expect you to," Spirit said, and looked around the room, considering. "You mind if I use your corkboard?" he asked, indicating a board covered in pictures and papers and a lot of red string that hung next to the mini-fridge.

"Please," Star said, gesturing in a way that Soul suspected he thought was gracious. "That's what the conspiracy board is _for_."

"Your home life is _fascinating_ ," Maka said to Soul, and then _laughed_ at his long-suffering expression while her father pinned the blueprints up.

"All right," Spirit said once he'd finished and looked the prints over for a minute. "Justin, please enlighten us as to all these secret rooms you say Medusa has."

"The ones I know about aren't _secret_ ," Justin said, but stood up anyway and went over to stand next to Spirit. "I'm sure she _has_ secret rooms, but I don't know that anyone but her knows where they are."

"Free might," Giriko said, sprawling into the space Justin had vacated. "Though I only say 'might' because he is the _worst_ werewolf I've ever seen."

"What does that even _mean_ ," Soul said, and Justin laughed at him a little bit.

"He's more like a dog most of the time, just wants to dig holes and chase stuff and patrol," Justin said. "Which is why he's the gardener."

"Yeah, I fucked up that whole summoning deal," Black Star said from where he seemed to be trying to out-lounge Giriko. "They got the derpy werewolf instead of the badass."

"Shows what you know," Giriko said from the other side of the couch, and Black Star looked at him like he was maybe plotting his demise. "He might not have your traditional murderous werewolf personality, but trust me when I tell you that the dude is scary as hell when he decides he wants something or somebody dead. Don't underestimate him and you might live a few seconds longer in a fight."

"The _map_ , please," Spirit said, with enough force that everyone shut up and let Justin talk.

"Firstly, I think it's safe to assume that there's a weapons cache of some sort under Free's little detached house," Justin said, and Spirit nodded along. "He's the muscle, after all. Besides that, the first level basement is mostly wine cellar and home theater. Second level basement -- " and he paused.

"Second basement's the fungeon," Giriko said, and cackled when everyone else in the room either looked at him like they wished he'd never speak again or started rubbing at their temples.

"That," Justin said, looking a little pained at having to agree. "And the vault, which might as well be a maze, so I'd recommend you steer clear of it unless you have a reason to go in. No, I can't draw that for you. I think there might be another level, but I've never been down there and I haven't exactly seen the entrance. Sometimes you just have a hunch about these things, you know?"

"I'll take it under advisement," Spirit said. "Now, what can you tell me about the security?"

Soul sat through what felt like hours of Justin outlining Medusa's security measures and habits, the ways in which Free was a terrible werewolf but an excellent guard, and Black Star's insistence that the whole thing could be solved by smuggling in both themselves and a lot of swords and employing the dumbwaiter he was certain she'd had installed. Giriko's counter-suggestion was that they use the weaponized roomba army or maybe the drones to somehow infiltrate via the water lines -- "If they can remote control those suckers they can waterproof 'em" -- and it wasn't until Black Star and Giriko were seriously about to get into a fight over whether attack roombas or swords were cooler that Maka stopped snickering and got everyone's attention.

"You know," she said, loudly enough to override Giriko and Black Star somehow, "if you guys want to get into her house, Medusa's having one of her famous wine and sex toy parties tomorrow evening."

"She gave me an invite," Black Star said. "She gave it to me _personally_ , so I assumed going would be a death trap. You telling me this is a legit event?"

"Wes has one too," Spirit said, that speculative gleam back in his eyes.

"Of course it's legit," Maka said, tone vaguely annoyed. "At this point I know her party schedule months in advance thanks to Tsubaki. I'm sure we can work out some sort of plan built around that, can't we? It's at least an excellent chance to do some recon. Don't you have a contact there, Papa?"

Giriko sat forward at this, ears practically perked, and even Justin raised an eyebrow. "How'd you manage _that?_ Medusa kills snitches." The line of Justin's jaw tightened, and Giriko turned to clap a hand on his shoulder in what Soul assumed was meant to be a reassuring gesture.

"You know I can't tell you that," Spirit said, and didn't even bother to sound reproachful. "But yes, Maka, we do. Once we have a plan our comms guys will get in touch and finalize it depending on what can and cannot be arranged from within the residence."

"Reminds me," Giriko said, tilting his head so that the green of the butt lamp caught on all of his multitudinous piercings. "Your guns ain't gonna work in there, she's warded the house."

Spirit's face was a study in disbelief, but it was Black Star who spoke first. "You're telling me I am _literally_ going to have to fistfight a werewolf at some point," he said, and the grin on his face might be the scariest thing Soul had seen in his life, which given the past few weeks was a feat. "It's like _Christmas_."

Soul had more or less been expecting this reaction, and Kid didn't even twitch, but he was positively _delighted_ when Maka and Spirit did the _exact same thing_ , nearly in unison: raised a hand to their faces to rub both temples and visibly count down from ten.

"Okay," Spirit said, having reached his goal ahead of his daughter. "Let's regroup. You all take thirty minutes and get a snack or a shower or something while I go find Wes and get a better read on the information we have. I don't care how you manage it, but make sure you keep Giriko and Justin supervised while I'm gone."

"Consider it done," Kid said, and ignored the unruly look Giriko gave him like the professional he was.

/

Somehow, they managed. Giriko and Justin stayed under guard, Soul took a shower, Black Star didn't manage to erode anyone's sanity farther than he already had, and the reclusive ice cream truck apparently divulged a great deal of top secret information to Wes and Spirit, answering the question of just who the damn thing had been working for, anyway.

"They passed orders along to you as a favor," Wes said, and Soul wanted to grab him and shake him until something that made sense came out of his mouth.

Instead, he and Kid got to escort Giriko and Justin home via the back fence to collect whatever it was they needed in order to not tip Medusa off any quicker than necessary.

"I've never seen someone own so many knives," Kid muttered to him later, when he'd come back from walking Justin through the house to get his weapons of choice.

Soul shrugged. "I've never seen someone who had an _underground armory_ hidden underneath the ass end of an old Lincoln, but here we are," he said, still unable to decide if he was jealous or terrified of the fact that Giriko had that kind of firepower so well hidden. There had been a _rocket launcher_.

Kid shook his head and back they went, over the fence, through the dining room, back into a basement with decor that could drive a strong man mad and a table covered in more hot pockets than Soul had ever wanted to see in one place.

"I like your boyfriends," Wes said when Soul sat down on the zebra shag couch next to Maka, apparently engaged in an animated discussion with Black Star about bread and frozen food. "Like mine?"

Kid told him later that both he and Maka had looked the exact same kind of horrified. Soul decided to believe him, because the remainder of the evening passed in a haze that he suspected were the stages of grief re: his sanity, at long last. To be fair he also vaguely remembered participating in the crafting of The Plan, but mostly he couldn't get his brain to stop shrieking at the idea of his brother dating _Spirit Albarn_.

There wasn't that much of a plan, anyway. They were there to scout the location, look for what they could, and see if perhaps someone couldn't locate anything of interest, like hidden doors or summoning circles. If they found Tsubaki --

"We can't really plan for that ahead of time," Spirit had said, with honest regret on his face. "We'll get her out if at all possible, but we may very well have to do the rescue mission separately."

Hours later when they finally went their separate ways for the evening, Soul went looking for Maka, mostly because he couldn't quite get the way her shoulders had fallen out of his head. He found her sitting on the back porch steps, the only place that was currently quiet or private in any form -- Black Star was in the living room trying to coerce Giriko and Justin into watching terrible movies and thus rendering most of the ground floor a noisy public space, Spirit and Wes were still downstairs, and Kid had excused himself to his office, however temporarily.

"Hey," he said, and she turned to look at him, a glass already sweating in her hand. "Already found the liquor cabinet?"

"Kid made it for me," she said, and Soul was almost relieved to see that stubborn set to her jaw, the way she shifted her weight like she was expecting to have to get up and put his ass on the ground out of principle.

"He's an all right guy," Soul said, and lowered himself to the ground beside her. "I was going to offer if he hadn't."

"What makes you think I need a drink," Maka said, not really a question so much as a warning.

Soul shrugged. "Well, I know I'd need a few if I were looking at possibly leaving one of my close friends to some unknown, probably terrible, fate." He paused, and looked at her drink again, this time with perhaps a little envy. "And that whole thing with Wes -- "

"Let's not even acknowledge that," Maka said before he could get any further. "One traumatic event at a time, if you please."

"Good idea," Soul said, and tangled his hands together for lack of anything else to do while he tried to locate enough brain cells to put together a sentence. "Listen, about Tsubaki," he tried, and Maka interrupted before he could keep going.

"I'm glad she's not really seeing Medusa," Maka said into her drink, equal parts relieved and embarrassed. "Not that I wanted to try again or anything, this isn't a boy band song, it's just -- "

"I know," Soul said, and tried his luck putting an arm around her shoulders, if only because she looked so lonely saying it. When he wasn't immediately punched in the kidney, he kept talking. "We all want good things for people we care about, and I'm pretty sure nobody's going to argue that Medusa's good for her."

"Yeah," Maka said, and lapsed into silence in favor of drinking.

"Anyway," he said, determined for once in his life to have a real conversation with this woman, "I just wanted to say that whatever happens tomorrow, I -- I know it means a lot to you and I know you hate having to take orders from your father, especially when they might mean you have to leave Tsubaki behind. So, you know, if there should be some kind of communications mishap and you don't get the order to leave her -- "

Green eyes flicked his way, and Soul's mouth shut with a snap.

"Are you offering to go down on _insubordination charges_ with me?" Maka asked, incredulous, smiling.

"Is _that_ what I said," Soul asked, putting on his best clueless face, the one that'd been fooling the neighbors for weeks.

She laughed into her drink this time, and all Soul could think was _worth it_. "Perhaps I misheard you," Maka said. "But if something _does_ go horribly wrong, I hope you're there to help me clean up the mess."

"I'll drink to that," Soul said, and, before things could get too awkward, got back up so he could actually _get_ a drink to toast with.


	7. scattering dildos to the wind

Kid was surprised to find that Medusa's house, in addition to being the largest on the block, was also the only one that seemed to have had the attentions of a real architect.

"Thank god," Soul grumbled from beside him, one hand fussing with the knot of his tie as they approached down an immaculate stone pathway. "At least _something_ on this block isn't an eyesore."

"Shame it's full of death traps and voodoo," Black Star said, and Kid was still having trouble with the cognitive dissonance associated with the obvious fact that Star was more at ease in formalwear than either Kid or Soul. He'd even had something _tailored_ on hand that was suitable, though of course he'd opted for an unbuttoned collar and a tie that was almost but not _quite_ so loosely tied that Kid could take him to task for it.

Not that it mattered. It was a party centered around alcohol and sex toys and hopefully _not_ Medusa trying to murder or imprison them, though Kid was pretty sure that was just wishful thinking, a remnant of a time in his life when he hadn't believed in witches and went around blithely assuming that people did things for reasons that made _sense_.

The expansive double-doors were answered by a bubbly girl who looked just familiar enough to be distracting, a girl who introduced herself as Patty, took their jackets, had them leave their shoes by the door, and ushered them down a long stone-tiled hall to a living room so large that Kid was certain his apartment would fit inside it. There was a lot of exposed wood, obscenely high ceilings, a roaring fireplace for no good reason, and a _lot_ of glass where the room more or less opened onto a lavishly appointed back porch.

Well, and there were the dildos.

And there were two women there before them, both standing next to a regal Bösendorfer grand piano in the company of, Kid assumed, their host.

"Who the fuck would use a _Bösendorfer_ as a dildo display," Soul hissed in apparent mortal offense, and Kid had to grab his elbow to keep him moving. "God himself would be offended."

"You obviously haven't been around very many wealthy people," Black Star said, still proceeding at an easy stroll. "Oh look, that one's purple glitter, can we get it?"

In another world, one where he hadn't just recognized the women standing by the piano, Kid might have had a retort or at least a beleaguered sigh. As it was, he suddenly needed Black Star to pull _him_ along, because the women at the piano, one chatting up Medusa and the other intent on fondling every dildo on display, were people he was familiar with.

"Oh, hi!" said the woman who'd been checking out the goods as they approached, a short blonde in a nice black dress with a gold-embossed eyepatch and god save him this was _Marie Mjolnir_ and _where the fuck had she come from_. "We just moved in and couldn't make the barbeque, but Medusa came by personally to invite us to her party, so here we are. I'm Marie, and this is my partner, Yumi."

"The pleasure is mine," Kid said, and even managed some inflection through his shock because he hadn't really wanted confirmation that _Yumi Azusa_ was here too, that made _both_ of his direct superiors who should have been _very_ far away. "We haven't been here very long, either."

"Too long not to have met me," said a warm, husking voice, and Kid swallowed panic so he could turn to face Medusa with what he hoped was a pleasant smile.

"The stories simply don't do you justice," he said, and it was true. No one had mentioned her looks, and honestly Medusa was a striking woman, with bobbed honey-gold hair and gleaming honey-brown eyes, a smile that made his skin prickle a little, and elegantly simple serpentine tattoos that spiraled from her wrists to her shoulders, more the suggestion of snakes than anything. Add to that the slinky black dress she was wearing and the smoky thigh highs that were unavoidably on display, and, well. Kid took the hand she proffered, noted black nail polish, and did the only thing he could think of, which was press a light kiss to her skin before backing out of her personal space with all seemly haste.

"What a delightfully charming man you are," she purred, and turned to Soul. "And you, what a sharp dresser. The red shirt is bold, but it suits you."

She did not, Kid noticed, offer Soul her hand.

"And I've met your partner already, at the barbeque. That sauce was _extraordinary_ , you simply _must_ tell me about it," Medusa continued, looking at Black Star with a certain hungry speculation that made Kid decide he was going to have to spend his evening staying as close to Star as possible.

 _"The drone's out,"_ said a tiny voice over his earpiece. _"No sign of anything unusual."_

Right, the chicken drone. Kid and the others followed Medusa at her request to a dining area off to one side, where she'd set up more toys along with a multitude of wine bottles and a selection of hors d'oeuvres. If he was lucky, a little alcohol would help him forget the ludicrous part of the plan, which was using one of the chicken drones from the barbeque as a spy cam to help keep tabs on what was going on outside and possibly warn them if Free looked to be doing anything suspicious.

"This is the Longhorn," Medusa was saying when Kid stopped daydreaming about the day when he'd be able to go home and get drunk in quiet solitude, and somehow he wasn't sure if she was talking about the frankly monstrous vibrator she was holding or the wine she'd poured them.

Thankfully more people arrived before Kid had to endure a sex toy sales pitch, and he turned back towards the main room in time to see Patty lead in what seemed like the rest of the neighborhood: Spirit and Wes, both in their usual sober suits and already walking much too close together for Soul's sanity to survive; Kim and Jackie, looking like the only normal people there; and Maka, on her own in a surprisingly nice black dress as she, too, tried to ignore her father.

"It's _wonderful_ to have so many of you here," Medusa said once they'd all had time to secure a drink and a place to sit. "As you can see, I've pulled out the stops, and I've set up a separate table of toys targeted at a male audience, complete with scotch pairings."

Black Star made a tiny noise that meant he was half a second away from doing something fatally embarrassing. Kid, in desperation and with half his brain already dedicated to listening to the guys in the ice cream truck narrate the adventures of the chicken drone, did the only thing he could think of: leaned back as casually as he could on Medusa's plush couch and draped one arm over Star's shoulders and one over Soul's, just as a reminder.

It _definitely_ wasn't so he'd be able to strangle Black Star as fast as possible if he started to do something truly ill-advised.

"In addition, we've got a bath and body table dedicated to what you might think of as accessories -- condoms, lube, massage oil -- that I _assure_ you are essentials, along with safer sex information. Please make yourselves at home and explore." Again that predatory smile. "And, should any of you need a break or a place for a _private conversation_ , the porch is open to all and there are a few game tables in the den."

Kid couldn't deny that she'd honestly set up an impressive array of what appeared to be high quality merchandise. He _also_ couldn't deny that being trapped at a sex toy party with Black Star was the stuff of nightmares, but after seeing the way Soul and Maka stared at their respective blood relatives when they thought no one was watching, he suspected that perhaps he had things easy.

There were still a lot of things Kid knew he'd never unsee, including but not limited to: Medusa discussing strap-on sex positions with Kim and Jackie, who looked both enraptured and embarrassed; Spirit and Wes having a serious debate over by the men's table that he suspected was _not_ about scotch; and then, cherry on top, Soul reflexively saying "name of your sex tape" when Medusa brought out a wine called original sin, only to have her give him a throaty laugh and reply, "Oh, no, darling, that's _Anaconda_."

That made Soul go a bit green, and he retreated back to his fake boyfriends where they were both standing by the piano, debating whether Wes or Soul would be the one to try and liberate Medusa's defiled dong display.

Not his smartest choice. As soon as he got close enough Star grabbed him and spun him to face the room, the better to have an uninterrupted view of his backside, and proceeded to hold a large blue dildo up to his ass.

"I like this one," he said, and after a moment of tutting over it like he was picking out curtains, set it aside for a thicker number in vibrant red. "But look at _this_ , Kid, it matches his eyes, look how it _nestles --_ "

 _"Taking the dog for a walk,_ "said the voice in Kid's ear, and he caught Soul's elbow when he started to struggle free of Black Star's cackling ass. _"Your marlboro lights are ready and waiting_."

"Soul," Kid said, and thankfully the other man picked up what he was laying down with his tone and stopped fighting for a second. "Time to get moving. Go see if Patty can show you where the bathroom is."

Soul gave him a sideways look that was an honestly hilarious mix of murderous intent because of Black Star and hard-boiled cop determination, but then Black Star chose that moment to pick up another vibrator and more or less yell, "Oh, this one's called _big boss_ , that's _perfect_ ," and Soul all but _ran_ towards Patty where she was putting together a little wine display on a side table.

Kid settled his elbows on the piano and leaned back; raised an eyebrow at Black Star. "Well, I can't deny that that was _effective_ ," he said, then glanced down at the monstrosity in Star's hands and raised _both_ eyebrows. "You sure that isn't a baseball bat?"

Star waggled his eyebrows at him and gave him a crooked grin that kind of made him want to follow Soul. "Wanna find out?"

Kid drank his wine.

/

Soul would have preferred to approach Patty as though it'd been his idea, as though he just had to pee or maybe as though he wanted the dime tour of the house, but there was nothing to be done for the natural disaster that was Black Star other than try to get out of the way. As a result, Patty looked a bit concerned when he first approached, but that quickly moderated into a professional kind of upbeat helpfulness.

"Yes, of course," she said, and took his arm. "Just this way. Would you care to see the wine cellar on your way back to the party?"

"Oh, absolutely," Soul said, and at least for _this_ he didn't have to fake his enthusiasm. Anything to get this over with, anything to be somewhere quiet by himself, anywhere that let him get closer to locating Tsubaki.

"Great!" she said with a bright smile, and then they arrived at what Soul assumed was the bathroom door. "I'll be here when you're ready."

Ready. Odd choice of words, but what about this hadn't been? Soul let himself in, shut the door, and turned to face a room that was _definitely_ bigger than his bedroom. A lot bigger, and involving a lot of mirrors and white and gold marble that framed a tub that he was pretty sure was bigger than his _bed_. There also appeared to be a table beside it with a hotel-worthy display of toiletries, if one lived in a universe where 'toiletries' included multiple kinds of lube, flavored condoms, a seeming rainbow of bath bombs, and what he assumed, going by the acrobatics depicted on the covers, was a fine selection of erotic literature.

Still, now that he was here, Soul found that he did need to pee, so he spent a minute looking for the toilet -- the tub was tucked into a glass-walled corner full of a lush indoor garden, which he guessed was what one did when one had a lot of money in a desert climate, but the toilet was not immediately evident. He found it behind a pair of doors opposite the sink, did _not_ attempt the bidet, and once he'd washed his hands edged towards that tub, intrigued.

Well, intrigued until a giant _snake_ undulated out of the plants to stare at him.

"Oh, did Lamia startle you?" Patty asked when Soul exited the bathroom with perhaps more than seemly haste. "She's always curious about new people."

"How nice," Soul said, and let Patty lead him back down the hallway while his heart rate went back to normal.

"The wine cellar is this way," Patty said, opening a side door onto what seemed to be nothing more than a normal, if lavishly appointed, office.

"Um," Soul said, and Patty laughed.

"Wouldn't _you_ want the wine adjacent to your workspace?" she asked, and reached out to pull a lever that Soul had till that moment assumed was one of several decorative serpentine wall sconces.

"Wow," he said, hands in his pockets as he watched a section of the floor swing up to reveal a cheerfully-lit staircase and the tops of several wine racks. "This lady knows how to party."

Patty's cheerful demeanor shifted in an instant to something that triggered nearly all of Soul's cop reflexes. "You have no idea," she said, and pressed something small into his palm. "So you can keep in the loop. While you're down there, check out the casks."

It was a tiny earbud, twin to the one Kid was wearing, and Soul was still trying to get the damn thing in place when Patty gave him a wink and a peace sign and left.

Soul finally got the earbud in place just in time to hear _"the dog's just patrolling, nothing to report"_ as he headed down the stairs and found himself in a veritable _cavern_ full of rack upon rack of wine. Straight ahead of him was another door that, upon further inspection, led into a home theater that may as well have been a boudoir, so Soul let that be for the moment in favor of looking for whatever casks Patty had mentioned. There were, unfortunately, quite a few to choose from, though most of them weren't remarkable and the way Patty had said it gave him the impression that he'd know whatever it was he was looking for when he saw it.

Ten minutes later all Soul had learned was that Medusa had more expensive wine than any one person could ever need, and based on that conclusion had decided that some of this stuff _had_ to be poison. Might be a fun form of Russian roulette, just let people you didn't like into the wine cellar to drink and see who came up dead. Seemed like the kind of thing a woman who smiled at people the way Medusa did might enjoy --

And then he rounded a corner and found the cask Patty had been referring to, an oaken monstrosity that spanned floor to ceiling and could probably be used as a bedroom in its own right if one didn't need much more space than a bed took up. More importantly, it had AMONTILLADO branded into the front of it, and even Soul knew a Poe reference when he saw one.

Mostly because of Maka, back when she'd taken that lit class with him and forced him to do the readings, but still. He squeezed around the cask's perimeter, looking for anything out of the ordinary, but as far as he could tell the thing was just what it appeared.

"For the love of _god_ , Montressor," he muttered, halfway stuck between the cask's outer edge and the wall, and heard, somewhere in the depths of it, the kind of beep he'd gotten used to hearing from the ID scanners at work when someone forgot how to use them.

Maka was never going to let him live this down if the key to finding Tsubaki was literary trivia she'd made him memorize for a stupid test when they were freshmen. He scrambled free after a minute's struggle and stood in front of the thing, trying to remember. There'd been something relevant in that stupid story, he thought, and if only he could remember it. It wasn't just the whole 'leading someone into a wine cellar to die' vibe, though that _was_ very Medusa; there'd been something else.

There was a small sound, and Soul jumped, expecting cobras -- and then remembered that there were people above him having a _party,_ and he really needed to locate some chill. Except -- _that_ was it. The main character's coat of arms had involved a snake biting someone, what had his family motto been? Something in Latin, Maka had nearly gone upside his head with a book for whining about having to memorize something that was like all of four words --

"Nemo me impune lacessit, that was it," he said, having finally managed to get two brain cells to work right, and something inside the cask went _click_. Soul pushed on the round front of it and was almost startled at how easily it swung inwards, revealing a spiral staircase that tunneled straight down for some distance, more than he'd really wanted to deal with.

"Guess I owe Maka," he grumbled, and took a steadying breath before he started down the stairs. 

Somewhere towards the halfway point, the earbud said, _"Looks like we're heading for a bit of a fox in a henhouse situation -- "_ and cut out as he descended. He quickened his pace. If the chicken had been spotted, they might not have much time.

The stairs ended in a room that looked like it had originally been a tunnel section, with walls of crumbling brick that met in an arc high above his head and ancient leather and wood furniture. At the far end, facing him, was a bar of heavy, ornate wood that looked like it'd been meant to survive a bomb blast in luxury; from the looks of the shelves behind it, it would also allow anyone nearby to survive said bomb blast while getting blitzed on _extremely_ expensive liquor.

Still, there was no one there and nothing that looked particularly telling, so Soul edged off the stairs and headed for the side doors, all of which were heavy wood that matched the bar and banded with black iron. When the first one opened onto a long hallway lit with the same lighting he'd seen in expensive spas, Soul moved on to the others only to find that they _all_ led onto long hallways that ended in more sturdy doors.

Or, well, they might all be the same, but the fourth and final door opened onto a _very_ different scene from what he'd been expecting.

"That sure is like a thirty foot python," he said dumbly, staring at the snake corpse that occupied a disconcertingly large portion of the hallway and the blood that was inching towards him.

"The only reason you aren't already dead is because I don't think you're here to help Medusa," said a woman's voice, and Soul managed to stop staring at the dead snake and realized that there were other _people_ in the hallway, too.

"I'm just some poor asshole who's in way over my head," he said to the woman who'd spoken, a woman he now recognized from what felt like years ago on the sidewalk late at night, except this time she was wearing lacy lingerie, a _lot_ of blood, and had a trenchcoat hanging off her shoulders that definitely belonged to the _other_ woman in the hallway. "Nice to see you again, Tsubaki. Nice _sword_."

"This old thing?" she said, and hefted the blood-drenched sword in her hand as if she'd forgotten it was there. "Thanks, it's a family heirloom. Medusa's trying to steal it."

"Can we _please_ get out of this hallway," said the other woman, a tall dishwater-blonde who looked to be packing several guns and even more knives. "Or is it social hour? Hi, I'm Liz, Patty's sister. You must be the cop. Let's get the fuck outta here."

"Let's," Soul said, and moved aside so they could pass.

/

Kid was just starting to maybe relax slightly courtesy of a couple glasses of really excellent wine and Black Star's running commentary on Spirit and Wes's apparent taste in sex toys and alcohol when his earpiece clicked to life.

_"Looks like we're heading for a bit of a fox in a henhouse situation, look alive. Evasive maneuvers for the moment. Looks like the boys are back in town."_

Through herculean effort Kid managed not to let his expression betray his alarm. If they'd sent Giriko and Justin to run interference on Free, that meant that the drone had not only been spotted but that it was being _chased_.

"What was that song you liked so much, Star," he said, as conversationally as he could manage with his shoulders so tight. Star stopped lounging against the piano and glanced at him, stupid grin still in place but eyes ready for murder.

"Bad moon on the rise?" he hazarded, and, when Kid nodded, shrugged. "I only liked it because the chorus sounds like he's saying 'there's a bathroom on the right,' you know that."

Kid rolled his eyes and did his best exasperated spouse impression. "Figures," he said. "No wonder you were singing it so much, your sense of humor has never exactly been dignified."

Black Star made the prissiest noise Kid had heard since the last time he went to a gay bar. " _Fine,_ " he said, affecting disdain. "I'll go where my humor is _appreciated._ "

He headed for Spirit; Kid pushed himself away from the piano and tried to look jilted as he made his way over to Maka, who was perusing a table full of vibrators and zinfandel under Medusa's watchful eye.

"Ladies," he said, and let Medusa refill his wine glass despite the venomous snake on the bottle's label. "Have you seen the moon tonight? It's _stunning_ , Star and I were just talking about it."

"I was actually just talking to Medusa about my roommate," Maka said, and while Kid was pretty sure she'd picked up on the code phrase, he was _also_ pretty sure that Tsubaki was a topic Maka had been explicitly forbidden from bringing up. "Since she sees her more often than I do now that she's on the night shift and all."

Medusa gave the two of them maybe the least creepy smile she'd managed all evening. "Tsubaki is a delight," she said, and took an elegant sip of her own wine. "But she's been so busy these past few days, I'm afraid I haven't seen much of her."

Too late, Kid realized that most of the wine bottles on the table were empty.

"What a _shame_ ," Maka said, and finished off her glass. "It must be so _difficult_ for you, having to be separated from her while you've got her tied up in preparation for your dark rituals."

To Medusa's credit, her smile did not slip. The look in her eyes, however, turned deadly, and even as she was saying, "Silly girl, I think you've had too much to drink," something dark and freezing was curling into the room, something Kid couldn't see but which nonetheless made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kid saw Kim's head whip around, eyes wide and terrified.

"I agree," he said somehow, and put a hand on Maka's shoulder. "Let's get you some water. Medusa, I'm so sorry, she's had a rough week."

The feeling of impending doom subsided, but not entirely. "Of course," Medusa said, ever gracious. "It's partially my fault as well. I shouldn't have let her have so much. Go with Patty, she'll get you taken care of."

"Maka," Kid said, and though she initially resisted, Maka let him steer her away from the murderous witch and over to Patty, who had already fetched a glass and a pitcher of water.

"Too close," Kid said, and waited while Maka drank her water.

"I'm gonna go back over there," Maka said once she'd finished, and that was _exactly_ the thing Kid had been afraid she'd say. "I'm sick of this and I'm worried and I don't want to sneak around any more."

" _Maka,_ " Kid said, and this time when he put a hand on her shoulder he shook her a little. "I'm pretty sure the last thing Tsubaki wants is for you to get yourself killed like this."

"Like _what_ ," Maka snapped, and Patty caught her other arm. "I don't want to have to deal with losing her because we were all too scared to go after her, we don't have _time_ to be standing around giggling over sex toys when she could be -- "

 _"HEADS UP,"_ screamed his earpiece, and Kid didn't hesitate. He let go of Maka's shoulder so he could shove her into the dining area and behind a wall, then grabbed Patty and dragged her with him. Star would be fine, surely, he was a ninja crime lord whatever --

"What the fuck -- "

Kid clapped a hand over Maka's mouth and together they leaned just enough to peer into the main room, which afforded them an excellent view of the exact moment when everything went horribly wrong.

It was, at first, understated: the chicken drone, looking somewhat worse for the wear, buzzed in through the open back doors. No one _said_ anything, but everyone _noticed_. Spirit and Wes looked at each other and darted towards the formal dining room; Kim and Jackie looked at each other, grabbed a handful of dildos, and booked it for the front door; Marie and Azusa both pulled _ridiculous_ knives from their _garters_ , and who were his bosses, _really;_ Medusa drew herself up to a downright regal height from which to better radiate her displeasure; and Black Star, halfway back to the piano, simply threw himself under it.

And then, a heartbeat later, something huge and musclebound that might have been a wolf if a wolf could be a human bodybuilder careened through _every single one_ of the panes of glass overlooking the porch, because why go through an open door when the most direct path was to go through the windows, Kid supposed.

The chicken drone, sensing imminent death and finally in a space in which it could do so, shot straight up to circle Medusa's very high ceilings.

Free, thwarted and angry and still very much in motion, skidded across the room, claws digging grotesque furrows in what had to be expensive wood floors, and launched himself at the thing that would let him gain height most easily: the piano.

Black Star, having already probably thought through the situation, was no longer there by the time Free slammed into the mastercraft instrument, scattering dildos to the wind and howling as he did his best to literally climb the walls so he could get to the drone.

Medusa said something that was definitely _not_ any human language, and Free stumbled, fell flat on his face atop the piano, and didn't get back up.

"Let's -- not," Kid said, and finally let go of Maka as he eased back behind the wall and tried to draw a full breath.

/

Soul followed Tsubaki back upstairs at a dead run and would have marveled at how the woman was managing to move so quickly barefoot and blood-soaked if he hadn't been trying to damned hard just to _keep up_. They emerged into the wine cellar to sounds of cacophony from above, which only made Tsubaki run faster; they entered the ground level just in time to hear the discordant screech of Free's massive werewolf form slamming into the piano.

Tsubaki stopped in the hallway entry, considering and, for the moment, unnoticed. Soul and Liz peered around her at a tableau that Soul couldn't have dreamed up even on hallucinogens: there were dildos on every conceivable surface, wine on every piece of expensive furniture, an _honest to god werewolf_ sprawled on top of the piano and snarling murderously at Medusa as she advanced, and, late to the party as usual, Giriko and Justin standing, poleaxed, just inside the back doors as they tried to decide just what the fuck to do.

Thankfully, Black Star solved that problem for them.

" _Dildo paddles ain't just for ping pong any more,_ " he shrieked, emerging from the den at something like the speed of light, a dildo-handled paddle in each hand. Medusa has just enough time to see him coming before he slammed into her, one paddle hitting either side of her ass with a noise that made Soul flinch in sympathy even from a distance and even knowing who and what Medusa was.

Medusa _screamed_ , and did something that opened up a furrow in her floor in roughly the same spot Black Star was standing, except he was long gone by then, skidding around her on the polished floor so he could hit her again, this time across the _face_. She went sprawling across the floor, which should have been awesome except that it meant that Free managed to get his feet back under him.

"That's my cue," Tsubaki said, and tossed a mildly starstruck Liz her coat back so she could sprint into the room mostly naked except for the blood and the lace and the _sword_.

Black Star saw her coming, made a face like he'd just fallen in love for a fraction of a second, and then seemed to infer that Tsubaki was the one best suited to deal with the witch, because he turned around and assumed a combat stance in Free's general direction, paddles still in hand.

"There's nothing we can do here, is there," Soul said, without looking away from the scene of utter madness in front of him as Spirit and Wes emerged from the dining room and tackled Medusa to the ground while she was trying to square off with a katana-wielding Tsubaki.

"I don't think so," Liz said, watching as Giriko and Black Star both started taunting Free. "Though that sort of shit's gonna get them killed, probably."

Tsubaki put her sword to Medusa's throat -- and then Soul's attention was diverted to the piano once again, because Marie had snuck up and apparently _stabbed_ Free while he was busy trying to intimidate Giriko, Justin, and Black Star all at once, and his resulting bellow felt like it should have shattered any intact glass in the place.

"I could really use a drink," Soul said, watching as Free's werewolf form started to writhe its way back to something very human and very _naked._

"Same," Liz said, shrugging back into her coat.

Spirit and Wes seemed to have subdued Medusa with Tsubaki's help and a lot of stares that seemed torn between terror and arousal when Soul managed to look away from the spectacle that was Free.

"Wanna go back downstairs and find something really expensive?" he asked, suddenly _exhausted_.

"Abso-fucking-lutely," Liz said, and without further ado they turned around and headed for the wine cellar.


	8. epilogue

From atop of one of the seemingly hundreds of wine barrels in Medusa’s cellar, Kid had either the best or very worst vantage point from which to witness the way the evening somehow continued its downward spiral into madness.

Kid lifted his glass, taking a sip of rather unfairly exceptional wine as he watched his begartered bosses corner Spirit Albarn in the home theater, and it would’ve almost looked like a boudoir photo if Marie hadn’t been holding a knife to Spirit’s sternum, growling over the operation he’d put _her_ agents in. It also didn’t help Wes Evans was swiping what appeared to be a boxed set of _Game of Bones_ from the porno-adaptation DVD case.

Nearly the whole operation had made it into the cavern, Kilik and Spirit’s ice cream truck informants investigating the seemingly dozens of high-tech hidden wine stashes throughout the cellar. Kim and Jacqueline had returned from their dildo getaway and were loading up with every bottle of wine they could carry. Only a few paces away, Soul Evans was crouched between two casks, assuming something close to the fetal position, his wine glass pitifully empty.

“Maybe if we hurry before all the lube sets in, we can salvage it?” Maka offered, awkwardly patting the mess of his hair as the detective mourned Medusa’s all too formerly pristine piano. Soul shook his head, mentioned something about Russian roulette wine barrels, and swayed to his feet to go try his luck at finding a loaded cask.

Kid watched Black Star clap Soul on the back with one of those accursed dildo paddles, congratulating him for birthing his very first conspiracy theory. “Don’t be hasty, sweetcheeks! We’ll find us some crystal chalices and set up a high-class game of snake wine pong. Let us go forth and celebrate our badass victory over the Spooky Shit this fine evening,” he said, gesturing grandly with the paddle and leading Soul away to the impressive liquor bar where Patty was expertly mixing drinks for Justin and Giriko -- the latter two desecrating the ornate wooden bar with a hair-raising session of five finger fillet. Black Star said, “Also dude did you _see_ me spank a witch? Verily, I _yote_ that bitch.”

Maka tilted her head a touch, in deep thought as she walked over to Kid and hoisted herself on a crate of the very oldest of the wine bottles, which was why he’d claimed this corner for himself in the first place. “Did he just conjugate yeet?”

“I’ve no idea. I would just really appreciate it if he wouldn’t _rhyme_ ,” Kid said.

She laughed, blindly choosing a wine behind her knees at random and deftly opening it with one of Liz’s borrowed knives. “If that’s the worst thing he says the rest of the night, I suppose I’ll call it a victory too.” Kid watched as she slouched just the slightest on her perch, enjoying the mellow wine with a sigh. “And now to permanently delete the archives,” she said, her eyes sliding reluctantly to her father and Soul’s brother.

“I’ll drink to that.” Kid drained his glass and held it out for her to refill.

As far as Soul’s claims of sabotaged alcohol went, no one had appeared to have come across anything poisonous yet, but when Kid took another indulgent sip of wine, he saw what he assumed to be a poison-induced hallucination of _his father_ standing next to the AMONTILLADO hidden staircase, a tall specter in crisply-pressed black attempting to debrief blood-covered, lingerie not-covered-enough Tsubaki.

The woman had that unnerving, hazy-looking sword in one hand and a mostly-empty wine bottle in the other. “Masamune blew my cover, then offered to kill Arachne in exchange for my capture.” She took a healthy swig of the wine, tossed her head to get her dark hair out of her eyes, and smiled something pleasantly deadly. “If he’s this determined to take the sword, I’ll be happy to give it. Permission to murder my brother, sir.”

Kid’s father - because it _had_ to be him, one could not simply hallucinate that overcompensating, HDR enhancement of the human condition, his bizarre father’s impersonation of people somehow _more_ than people actually _are_ \- rubbed his bare chin a moment, considering with a sing-songing ‘hmmm’. He said, “We’ll add it to the docket. We still have another witch to take care of, after all.” He adjusted his black sunglasses on his too-human nose and cheerfully added, “I see you were able to manifest the blade well this time! Good work.”

To Kid’s left, Maka clamped a hand on his shoulder and gripped it like a bear trap. _“Is that your dad?”_ she hissed, drunkenly starry-eyed, and Kid found himself wishing to try his hand at the Russian cask roulette thing.

Grimacing because it was only natural that people would focus on his father instead of _metaphysical katanas_ and shapely underwear, he pried Maka’s fingers away. “I think I hear Black Star being wrong about guns,” he said, and watched her leap off the wine crate and beeline across the room with all the single-minded purpose of a nuclear missile.

After being dismissed by Kid's father, Tsubaki walked over to Liz and, after a moment’s pause, offered the blonde her wine bottle. Liz gave a her a crooked smile both parts equally cute and _obscene_ , accepting the blood-stained gift and saying something that Kid supposed he was grateful to not hear.

When he looked back over at his father, however, the man gave him a black-lensed look that spoke well enough without needing to hear anything. Feeling much younger than the adult he _knew_ he was, Kid slid off his cask, deigned to take his wine with him because _fuck it_ , and made his way over.

“Heya Kiddo!” his father said with a shade too much inflection. “How’d you like it?”

Kid squinted, hating he was already lost in this conversation and he hadn’t yet managed to say anything. “Like what?”

His father raised a pale hand, indicating the general drunken depravity of the wine cellar. “This! A dry run, you could say.”

“Is that a pun?”

“Hm?”

Kid ground his teeth for a moment, then took a very short sabbatical in the form of a couple judicious gulps of wine. “Why are you here, Dad? Why did the nice girl across the street call you ‘sir’ and have a magic sword? _Does my brother have something to do with this-”_

“Don’t be silly, son,” his father said, pushing those sunglasses up his nose again. “He’s too much of a scaredy-cat for this project!”

“Proj-” And then he was an interrupted by a ball-gag rolling by, laughter erupting behind him.

“Ay throw it back, lover!” Black Star shouted, which Kid ignored with the burning of the very center of the earth.

He tried his best to not crush the wineglass in his hand when he said, “ _What project._ ”

“The new division I’m commanding, 'Spooky, Paranormal, And Really Troublesome Occult Investigations.'” The man clapped his hands together, rubbing them gleefully. “And I’m pleased to inform you: you’ve all passed! I’m your new boss. You start first thing in the morning.”

Kid spluttered, now even less certain that this wasn’t a bad trip on sabotaged wine. “You’re … wait, _all of us?_ Black Star is a crime lord heir, I’m pretty sure Giriko is _three times a lunatic_ , if not a felon-”

Deliberately tilting his head to one side, Kid’s father asked, “Giri-who?”

Frowning, Kid looked over his shoulder and found _both_ Giriko and Justin missing, having completely vanished from the bar. “Oh. Right,” he said. He needed a lot more wine, and maybe a moment to himself so he could defiantly look into the eyes of god and bite into an entire wheel of brie.

Black Star, having sidled up to retrieve the ball gag, draped an arm across Kid’s shoulders. “So are you gonna introduce me to your dad or not?”

Kid’s father grinned with a multitude of perfect human teeth. “No need, I already know everything about you. You worked so well with my son on this test, I’m looking forward to see what you two can do together.”

In unmasked horror, Kid watched as Black Star pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his suit pocket and presented them to Kid with reverence. “If you would do me the honor, my bro, of wearing these aviators.”

 _“Dad,_ ” Kid said in desperation, “please tell me I am _not_ going to be co-workers with this _insane-”_

“Oh, maybe. Depending on performance, he may become your supervisor!” his father said with a pleased little smile.

And from the depths of underground snake wine cellar hell, Soul Evans drunkenly blurted, _“Name of your sex tape.”_


End file.
